ELIXIR has released its Annual Report for 2017, presenting the major achievements last year and highlighting the effort of over 650 experts from 21 ELIXIR Nodes. It shows the progress of ELIXIR Platforms, Use Cases and ELIXIR Nodes in meeting the objectives of the current ELIXIR Scientific Programme and introduces the work towards the new Programming cycle (2019-2023).
ELIXIR Core Data Resources
A key objective in ELIXIR Scientific Programme was to establish a set of Core Resources that are globally competitive and of critical importance to the life science community. In 2017, ELIXIR made several important steps towards this goal.
The ISMB conference in July 2017 in Prague saw the announcement of the initial list of ELIXIR Core Data Resources, which was the result of long-term effort of the ELIXIR Data Platform, Heads of Nodes, Scientific Advisory Board, and external evaluators. Drawing on this experience, ELIXIR was also an active participant in the Global coalition for Core Data Resources, an initiative facilitated by the Human Frontier Science Program Organization.
ELIXIR-EXCELERATE
In May 2017, the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project held a mid-term review and received very positive feedback on the activities and results of the first half of this project. The European Commission also recognised the quality of ELIXIR-EXCELERATE results in their analysis of the Horizon 2020 Research Infrastructures programme where it was cited as an early success story.
New Communities
An important milestone in 2017 was also the creation of new ELIXIR Communities for Proteomics, Metabolomics and Galaxy. These three Communities developed a strong programme of work, which will provide opportunities for joint technical activities that benefit their respective users. In 2018, further seven ELIXIR Community proposals will be evaluated.
Scientific Programme 2019-2023
In the second half of 2017, ELIXIR started the development of the ELIXIR Scientific Programme for 2019-2023 - the main strategy document that defines technical and scientific objectives for the next five years. The development involved a diverse group of stakeholders, including leaders of ELIXIR Platforms and Use Cases, the Heads of Nodes, members of Scientific Advisory Board and a large number of domain experts from ELIXIR Nodes.
ELIXIR will continue to work on the development of the Scientific Programme throughout 2018, ensuring it addresses the needs of the life science communities in Europe and drives forward the linking and exploitation of open biological data.
ELIXIR Annual Report 2017: download | read online