Blogger Danny Navarro says sharing proteomics data is "trickier than it seems." The problem, he says, isn't that proteomics researchers aren't willing to share their data with informaticians — the problem is that the proper infrastructure to share the data isn't yet in place. The databases available to share information don't upload data in the same formats or don't always take the same type of data, and researchers sometimes struggle to submit what they've got, Navarro adds.
Business Bytes Genes Molecules' Deepak Singh agrees, saying that informaticians sometimes unfairly blame researchers for the lack of data sharing. What's needed, he says, is "a set of standards" for proteomics data so that researchers and informaticians can share the information while avoiding problems. "For infrastructure to succeed, you need to make programmatic access easy and be a little patient. If you have choices, then the one that makes it easier and scalable to deposit and access is going to win out usually," Singh says.