The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge is heading a £11.4 million infrastructure project to provide the scientific community with free and unrestricted access to some of the world’s most important biological databases.
Titled FELICS – Free European Life-science Information and Computational Services – this unique electronic infrastructure project is designed to develop, enhance and interlink many of the most important data resources in Europe and widen their accessibility to the international research community. It will be funded under the Research Infrastructures action of the sixth Framework Programme (FP6) with the largest ever European award for computational infrastructures needed to support biological research....FELICS’ technical coordinator at the EBI, Phil Gardner, said: “Our databases are accessed by many tens or even hundreds of thousands of scientists and are recognised as crucial resources by researchers worldwide....FELICS encompasses many of the EBI’s familiar databases, but will also feature some crucial new activities and the group has been set several tasks and “deliverables” within three main areas: Networking activities; joint research activities; and transnational access activities....Graham Cameron, associate director of the EBI and coordinator of FELICS, said: “Bioinformatics now pervades biology. “Bioinformatics experts no longer sit between biologist and database. Researchers expect to directly access the databases and do real work. “FELICS gives scientists the electronic right to roam the biological knowledge space.”
PS: Apparently FELICS has no web site yet, but I'll blog the URL as soon as I discover it.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/06/2006 11:37:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
