1. Building IBISBA’s array of distributed facilities and expertise
As a distributed R&D infrastructure, IBISBA’s most precious assets are its distributed facilities and expertise. To federate facilities that provide IBISBA services, extensive work was performed to define IBISBA’s vision and mission. Likewise, focus was given to the creation of tools, such as a terminology base and an online IBISBA handbook, the latter providing IBISBA’s community with a comprehensive guide to IBISBA operations. Common understanding among facility operators was reinforced using internal training, mostly delivered through webinars (www.ibisba.eu/Webinars).
Regarding IBISBA’s user community and other stakeholders, during IBISBA 1.0 a communication strategy and tools (e.g. website - www.ibisba.eu) for its deployment were developed. Importantly, a distinctive logo was designed and registered as a trademark, and an online service catalogue and service request portal were launched. Finally, the wider stakeholder community was engaged, recruiting a strategic advisory board and organizing public workshops (e.g. IBISBA workshops held during BIOKET 2020 and the Global Bioeconomy Summit 2020, as well as various national events throughout the period).
2. IBISBA’s Transnational access Program
To acquire operational experience, the IBISBA 1.0 project provided partners with the opportunity to provide R&D services to Users from other countries. To implement the program, a project call process, including submission and selection sub-processes, was developed and hosted on the IBISBA web portal. In total 5 calls for projects were launched and 59 proposals were received from Users located in 25 different countries, including EU members states, associated and third countries. Significantly among the applicants, 34% were SMEs, illustrating the relevance of IBISBA for this category of Users. During the project period, IBISBA partners were able to support several projects requiring multiple services. Projects of this kind provided partners with hands-on experience of service interoperability, standardization, data sharing and management as well as on the service provision itself.
3. Creating business processes and e-infrastructure
Two ambitious aims in IBISBA 1.0 were to create a digital knowledge commons and begin to build capabilities to design, launch and monitor project workflows. In this respect, an IBISBA web-based data registry (
https://hub.ibisba.eu(si apre in una nuova finestra)) was created as a vital part of IBISBA’s future information system. This Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) compliant tool is a complete data management platform for IBISBA projects. It is an online portal for recording project progression, as well as storing, sharing and organising the data, protocols and models that are generated. Publicly available assets registered on the IBISBAHub are assigned an IBISBA-specific DOI. During the course of this work, a strong alliance was established with the research infrastructure ELIXIR, which is specialized in data for life sciences. This was vital in order to align IBISBA and ELIXIR technical service developments.
4. R&D activities to explore the foundations of interoperability
IBISBA 1.0 offered the opportunity to perform experimental work aimed at building interoperability between IBISBA facilities. To achieve this, work focused on the execution of computer-based and wet lab experiments aimed at developing two different cell factories, both designed to produce the same target chemical of commercial interest. Five research organizations were involved and extensive work was performed to develop common understanding and standards. Similarly, an experimental task planning tool was designed and tested, and a number of standardized protocols and experimental workflows were created. The outcome of this work is extremely enlightening, since it underlines the complexity of creating interoperability between R&D facilities, but also provides encouraging evidence that IBISBA is an ideal framework in which this can be achieved.
