This week, ELIXIR has taken a step closer to becoming the central research infrastructure for life-science information in Europe. Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom plus the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to kick start the construction of ELIXIR.

ELIXIR is a pan-European initiative which aims to operate a sustainable infrastructure for managing and safeguarding biological information in Europe. It will secure public access to information about genes, proteins and complex networks. Consistent with the movement towards open access to data and publications, ELIXIR will make important information freely available to researchers across academia and industry.

It is expected that many other countries will follow the first five in signing the Memorandum of Understanding to create a sustainable infrastructure for managing the data underlying life sciences research in Europe.

ELIXIR will be coordinated from its hub at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, near Cambridge in the UK. Following the fast take-up, ELIXIR is now rapidly moving into the construction phase.

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Leila Sattary

Leila is a freelance science writer specialising in science funding and research policy. She is a former editor of EuroScientist. She writes for a variety of online and print journals including news and features for Chemistry World, her Lab Rant column for Laboratory News and many more. In her day job she works as a Project Officer at the University of Oxford with particular interest in research policy, knowledge exchange and impact.

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