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Spotlight on

open data

Open data resources are resource stands out as most
essential for today’s life science important). Figure 6 shows how
community in both academia and ventures combine data from
industry. They act as archives of different databases.
experimental research data, inform
future research studies’ direction, They combine open data
and help link and bring together resources, often with proprietary
a vast wealth of interoperable information, to create value for
information. customers. In doing so, ventures
combine open data resources,
Many new databases are essential often with proprietary information.
to the broad research community, To enable new insights to be
but only a few have a sustained garnered, or to facilitate a diverse no growth
funding model, as highlighted in a range of customers to gain new growth of turnover and
recent study. In an 18-year period, knowledge, an assortment of emplyees
more than 60% of life science data needs to be connected and
research databases ceased to exist, analysed. We, therefore, found that
and a further 14% were no longer companies that grew more rapidly
19
updated . were among those who used many
different resources in combination 40
Research infrastructures such (Figure 5).
as ELIXIR work to increase the
long-term sustainability of their
resources and carry out targeted
actions so that these feed into 30
innovation and discovery in the
data-driven life science sector. Our
study highlighted the significance
of open data resources, particularly Companies in sample [%]
for small and medium-sized life 20
science companies, exemplified by
73% of respondents indicating that
data resources with information on
rare diseases (e.g. from Orphanet)
10
are important to the business.
Repositories holding information
on scientific publications present
another good example (e.g. from
EuropePMC) or human genomics 0
data (e.g. from EGA). 84% and
71% of respondents highlighted 0 1-5 6-10 >10
the importance of open data their Number of different data repository types used by venture
business operations.
Figure 5. Percentage of companies reporting either growth of turnover and number
Interestingly all companies in the
of employees or no change, related to the number of open data repositories used by
survey indicatezzwas relevant
a company.
to the business (no individual

19 zAttwood, T. K., Agit, B. & Ellis, L. B. M. Longevity of Biological Databases. EMBnet.journal 21, (2015).