ELIXIR is about integration of diverse resources including tools, training materials and technical services. Within EXCELERATE, ELIXIR is building portals to collate information on tools and data services (bio.tools), training events and material (TeSS, WP11 e-learning environment), compute resources (WP4 technical service registry) and cross-linked policy, standards and databases (FAIRsharing, WP4). A focus of EXCELERATE is to set up these portals such that they can interoperate.

Currently, a scientist can use TeSS to find training events and materials and then, in a separate search, use bio.tools to find relevant tools, and FAIRsharing to find standards and databases. At the moment these ELIXIR portals provide a useful, but fragmented service.  Ideally, linking TeSS and bio.tools to ELIXIR’s computer resources via common workflow diagrams would enable end-users to discover and learn about the prevalent bioinformatics workflows. In this implementation study, we want to achieve the first step and link TeSS and bio.tools via most prevalent bioinformatics workflows and lay the foundation to later incorporate other ELIXIR platforms, such as the compute resources, to provide an even more useful service for the researcher.

The goal of this implementation study is to provide the life-scientist end-user with a powerful tool to find and use ELIXIR resources - across the spectrum - based on intuitive graphical diagrams of the most prevalent scientific workflows.