Proposal for a Workshop on Reducing Barriers for the Management, Integration, and Public Sharing of Large and Complex Data among Biologists Working at Genome-Phenome to Macrosystem

American Institute Of Biological Sciences, Herndon VA

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract Title: Proposal for a Workshop on Reducing Barriers for the Management, Integration, and Public Sharing of Large and Complex Data among Biologists Working at Genome-Phenome to Macrosystems Levels (EF-1450894) American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) will convene a workshop for biologists from plant sciences and environmental macrosystems to discuss public access to federally funded research. The workshop will focus on challenges associated with research that requires combining data from multiple sources to conduct the research. The need to consider data management practices and problems is especially pressing for research communities in biology that require and generate large complex data, particularly when the resulting data will be used for future research. While different fields of biology may require different data these same research communities have common (and unique) issues they face related to managing and integrating these complex data, complying with standards and requirements, and how they can improve their science and its ongoing usefulness to the general public that support it through federal tax dollars. The macrosystems biology community works on quantitative, interdisciplinary, systems-oriented research on biosphere processes and their complex interactions with climate, land use, and invasive species at regional to continental scales. The systematics, evolutionary biology, and biological collections communities are also grappling with "big data" and "long tail data" issues. The genome-to-phenome community works in disciplines that include, but are not limited to, plant physiology, quantitative genetics, biochemistry, and bioengineering, especially in plants of economic importance. This workshop has broad reaching implications as researchers from different fields learn of each other's data, tools, and techniques, new scientific questions and opportunities can be expected to emerge, many at the intersection of previously independent lines of scholarship. Coupled with increased public access, the results can stimulate new private sector innovations and contribute to new scientific discoveries as different research communities access data collected by other disciplines. Results of the workshop and plans for further cross-disciplinary collaboration will be shared in a publicly accessible article that will be placed in the BioScience journal.