Global Biodata Coalition
Biodata resources and the critical ecosystem they form are at risk. As these data continue to grow, we must ensure they are sustained and remain open into the future through effective, long-term financial support.
The GBC convenes the world’s research funders to exchange knowledge and share strategies for supporting biodata resources, and provides a discussion forum for the managers of data resources, with the aim of developing principles and models for the coordinated funding of global core biodata resources.
Distributed infrastructure
Life sciences—or biodata—resources are essential infrastructure for public and private research, used by scientists worldwide. Research funding organisations spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year supporting biodata resources, both directly and indirectly. These resources are growing exponentially, as they are crucial to most current and future biomedical and life sciences research and are required to store the data generated by the open access policies adopted by most funders. This infrastructure has developed piecemeal over recent decades without coordination between funders or data resource managers and as a result the infrastructure is fragmented, duplicative, fragile, and lacks a strategy for long-term sustainability.
The GBC has been formed to address these challenges, on behalf of and in collaboration with research funders, to ensure that biodata resources remain freely available to all researchers everywhere around the globe, to address the fragility and potential loss of resources that would damage both public and private research, and to share approaches for the further expansion of biodata resources.
Benefits
The Global Biodata Coalition benefits funders by coordinating more efficient spending on data resources globally, both through reducing duplicate spending on similar resources and through encouraging greater participation from all funders. Funders will also benefit from coordinated approaches in support of the open access data policies that most now require.
The GBC benefits scientists and national infrastructures through safeguarding open access scientific data and ensuring support for the data infrastructure that is crucial for all biomedical and life science research. The GBC will also be of immense benefit to industry and the commercial sector because biodata resources are used extensively in patents, drug development, diagnostics development, and other biotechnology areas.