Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ELIXIR-EXCELERATE (ELIXIR-EXCELERATE: Fast-track ELIXIR implementation and drive early user exploitation across the life-sciences.)
Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2019-08-31
Following prioritisation of European research infrastructures by ESFRI, the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project (2015-2019) was awarded to accelerate the construction of ELIXIR. ELIXIR-EXCELERATE developed ELIXIR’s service platforms, established infrastructure operation and internal processes, and launched the ELIXIR Innovation and SME programme. The project was driven by use cases from four research communities: marine metagenomics, plant sciences, rare disease and human genomics. Thus, ELIXIR-EXCELERATE supported the early exploitation of infrastructure services by user communities across the life sciences. The original four use-cases have now expanded into a generic mechanism where ELIXIR have established partnerships with over ten different research communities (https://elixir-europe.org/communities).
A key aspect of the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE strategy was to support the development and integration of national ELIXIR Nodes. By strengthening national resources across Europe, ELIXIR can scale and sustain resources to meet large, diverse and geographically distributed data management needs in the life sciences.
An important outcome of ELIXIR-EXCELERATE is the development of long-term roadmaps for the ELIXIR Platforms. The implementation of these roadmaps – and so the sustainability of the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE investments – is funded by the ELIXIR member states through the ELIXIR 2019-2023 Scientific Programme.
Long-term sustainable open data resources, including the submission databases for e.g. DNA sequences, are a key part of a European infrastructure for biological information. ELIXIR has designated a set of Core Data Resources –European data resources that are of fundamental importance to the life-science community and the long-term preservation of biological data – and engaged in discussions with funders on how to best support the long-term development of this ecosystem. ELIXIR-EXCELERATE delivered the indicators and selection process for ELIXIR Core Data Resources and supported the designation of the first set. This work has been internationally noted; ELIXIR and the Core Data Resources concept has been instrumental in shaping the Global Biodata Coalition, an initiative by an international group of funders (including NIH, HFSP and the Japanese AMED agency) to support the international data ecosystem.
Building on the experience from ELIXIR Core Data Resources, we have now also selected a set of ELIXIR Recommended Interoperability Resources that define ELIXIR’s Interoperability Architecture and provide a basis for consistent data management practices. The work on Core Data Resources, ELIXIR Recommended Interoperability Resources and the value of robust, continent-scale processes for identifying research data resources as scientific infrastructure, has been recognised by funders as best-practice: the ELIXIR recommendations now form part of the ERC’s data management guidelines to life-science grantees.
ELIXIR Training, Capacity building and Staff Exchange - all initiated during ELIXIR-EXCELERATE and carried forward in the 2019-23 Programme - support the long-term development of people in our Nodes and generally throughout the ERA. For example, the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE Training Work Package – via national programmes in ELIXIR Nodes - supported training for 23,000 trainees from 60 countries in over 1,000 training events (2,870 days of training).
ELIXIR-EXCELERATE also supports the development of European biotech: ELIXIR’s Innovation and SME Forum provides a mechanism for people from industry and academia to learn about the technical services provided through the ELIXIR Nodes and to exchange knowledge and start collaborations to tackle bottlenecks in the data driven life science sector. During the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project these events reached more than 600 individuals (47% came from the public sector and 53% from industry) including 180 different companies in nine countries.
In summary, the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project has been critical for ELIXIR’s long-term operation. As ELIXIR now starts its 2019-23 Scientific Programme the technical and scientific experts in our national Nodes have formed strong networks that work with and within user communities across Europe. Indeed, most developments from ELIXIR-EXCELERATE will be taken forward and expanded in the transnational collaborative efforts of the ELIXIR 2019-23 Scientific Programme.