10th Discussion-20 January 2011

Brief Description and Continuing Discussion:

Topic 1: Storing and Analyzing data in the cloud (Led by Dawei Lin and Brent Richter)

Public, proprietary, and fee-for-service offerings in cloud computing is growing within the bioinformatics community, from collaboration tools (Google Docs), hosting companies (Amazon, Univa) to Bioinformatics tools and database (Geospiza, Ensembl).

We will explore some of these as an introduction to the current state of cloud computing in bioinformatics and then develop an understanding of current utility for core facilities.

Preliminary Information

Questions we hope to consider and discuss from the participants:

• What tools/services are being used by participants

• Are there advantages to using the cloud either for internal use or for sharing tools, if any.

• Experiences with vendors who are providing analysis tools and databases in the cloud (Life Technologies, Bioscope)

• What resources and time are needed for developing a cloud computing tool

Topic 2: Publishing the work of Core Facilities (Led by Fran Lewitter and Simon Andrews)

For most core facilities their primary objective is the effective processing of data for research groups rather than undertaking their own novel research. Where members of a core facility appear on a paper it is usually behind members of the research group they were assisting.

However during the course of operating a core facility many of us will have generated software, methods or results which would be of use to the wider community and it would be beneficial to everyone if this kind of work could be published.

This section of the call will look at the feasibility of publishing the work of a core facility. How people handle this at the moment and whether there are steps we can take to encourage this in the future.

Preliminary Information

Questions which we hope to address would include (please feel free to add more):

• Do people publish work they have done in the course of operating a core facility

• Are there suitable journals for publishing this kind of work

• How should time spent on preparing publications be funded

• Are there areas of core facility work for which papers are not published, but where these sorts of papers would actually be useful

• How do groups handle joint publications between research groups and the core facility

Transcript of Minutes

To follow after the call...