One hundred and forty five peer-reviewed papers and preprints resulting from activities funded by ELIXIR were published in the last calendar year. As a research infrastructure, the activities that ELIXIR funds yield a diverse range of publications. Here we explore the publication highlights of 2022.
All ELIXIR-supported publications and citations since 2011 are accessible on the publication page of ELIXIR’s impact dashboard. The publications include research funded by ELIXIR, research carried out by ELIXIR and funded by external grants and research presenting ELIXIR and its achievements. They are tracked using a semi-automated mining of Europe PMC (itself an ELIXIR Core Data Resource), and visualised in tableau.
A wide range of scientific areas
The Frontiers series of journals contained nine ELIXIR-supported articles in 2022, demonstrating the range of science receiving ELIXIR backing. Frontiers titles featuring ELIXIR include Cell and Developmental Biology, Genetics, Microbiology, Molecular Biosciences, Oncology and Plant Science. As befits a research infrastructure with significant expertise in fundamental genomics research, the journal with the most ELIXIR-supported publications was Nucleic Acids Research (15 articles), with Scientific Reports (seven articles) and Briefings in Bioinformatics (six articles) not far behind.
Applied research
Many publications show the impact of ELIXIR-supported activities on applied research. For example, an ELIXIR Finland study on predicting children’s predisposition to diabetes was published in Diabetes Care [Suomi 2022], and ELIXIR Hungary were part of an investigation modelling the preclinical detection of forms of leukaemia [Kotmayer 2022]. In addition, as a partner in the EU personalised in-silico medicine consortium EU-STANDS4PM, ELIXIR contributed to guidelines and recommendations for computations in clinical personalised medicine [Collin 2022].
The list of 2022 publications also demonstrates ELIXIR’s activity in the application of plant science research, for instance ELIXIR Slovenia published their study on the antimicrobial properties of different genotypes of hop plants [Kolenc 2022] and ELIXIR Czech Republic’s work on how palm tree genomes respond to arid conditions was published in New Phytologis [Schley 2022].
Making a splash
Finally, many of last year’s ELIXIR-supported papers are already demonstrating scholarly impact, despite their recent publication. For example, ELIXIR contributed to and was featured in "Introducing the FAIR Principles for research software” which featured in Scientific Data in October 2022 [Barker 2022]. The paper has already been cited nine times and shared in 416 tweets from 368 users, with a reach of up to two and a half million followers (according to altmetrics).
The tip of the iceberg
This short overview of ELIXIR-supported papers published in 2022 shows the influence of the life science infrastructure’s activities in both fundamental and applied research, in areas ranging from human and animal health to food security and climate change.
Publications making use of the hundred’s of ELIXIR-supported services and resources, which are significantly more numerous than ELIXIR-supported papers discussed here, are not yet included on the dashboard. Drysdale et al. estimate that the number of mentions of a subset of ELIXIR services, the Core Data Resources, was over 50,000 in 2017, representing 17% of the open access articles in Europe PMC that year [Drysdale 2020]. Clearly, if ELIXIR supported services and resources were included in the tally of ELIXIR publications in 2022, the picture would be one of even greater research impact. We hope, at some point in the future, to be in a position to include this level of detail in quantifying how ELIXIR’s hundreds of resources are used to progress life science research.
- Suomi, Tomi et al. “Type 1 Diabetes in Children With Genetic Risk May Be Predicted Very Early With a Blood miRNA.” Diabetes care vol. 45,4 (2022): e77-e79. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc21-2120
- Kotmayer, Lili et al. “GATA2 deficiency and MDS/AML: Experimental strategies for disease modelling and future therapeutic prospects.” British journal of haematology vol. 199,4 (2022): 482-495. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjh.18330
- Collin, Catherine Bjerre et al. “Computational Models for Clinical Applications in Personalized Medicine-Guidelines and Recommendations for Data Integration and Model Validation.” Journal of personalized medicine vol. 12,2 166. 26 Jan. 2022, https://doi.org/10.3390/jpm12020166
- Kolenc, Zala, et al. "Antimicrobial Properties of Different Hop (Humulus lupulus) Genotypes." Plants 12.1 (2022): 120. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12010120
- Schley, Rowan J., et al. "The ecology of palm genomes: repeat‐associated genome size expansion is constrained by aridity." New Phytologist 236.2 (2022): 433-446. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18323
- Barker, Michelle, et al. "Introducing the FAIR Principles for research software." Scientific Data 9.1 (2022): 622. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01710-x
- Drysdale, Rachel, et al. "The ELIXIR Core Data Resources: fundamental infrastructure for the life sciences." Bioinformatics (2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btz959
Find out more
ELIXIR’s Impact Dashboard, funded by ELIXIR-CONVERGE