The National Human Genome Research Institute has asked the life sciences community for its input in putting together a proposal to develop a biomedical data catalog that will make it easier to find, share, and cite research data
In a request for information issued last week, the NHGRI asked for the community's opinion on things such as critical barriers, opportunities, or incentives to making data more easily discoverable and citable; appropriate metrics for creating a successful data catalog; possible links to existing data repositories; and more.
All responses must be submitted via email by June 25, 2013.
The data catalog is part of the Big Data to Knowledge, BD2K, initiative, a National Institutes of Health-led effort to "support advances in data science, other quantitative sciences, policy, and training that are needed for the effective use of big data in biomedical research."
According to the RFI, "in addition to supplying core, minimal metadata to ensure a valid data reference, it is envisioned that a data catalog would include links out to the location of the data, to the NIH Reporter record of the grant that supported the research, to relevant publications within PubMed or journals, and possibly to associated software or algorithms."