Description
The objective of the ELIXIR preparatory phase was to produce a memorandum or memoranda of understanding between organisations (government agencies, research councils, funding bodies and scientific organisations) within the member states, with the purpose of constructing a world class and globally positioned European infrastructure for the management and integration of information in the life sciences.
To achieve this, ELIXIR worked to address the following tasks and issues:
- Define the scope of the infrastructure, its role and benefits
- Define an appropriate governance and legal structure
- Define a long term funding structure to provide a sustainable infrastructure
- Define the requirements for the European Data Centre in the next 5-10 years and make plans to meet these needs
- Involve all relevant stakeholders, including users, data providers, and tools providers to ensure that the infrastructure meets their needs
- Explore integration and interoperability between core and specialised data resources and the development of standards in newly emerging fields
- Define the critical interdisciplinary links that need to be forged between the ‘biological’ and related scientific disciplines, including medicine, agriculture and the environment
- Define the needs of related European industries
- Define a training strategy to ensure that Europe effectively exploits all the available information
The specific activities of the preparatory phase included:
- Holding stakeholder meetings to bring together national representatives, key scientific opinion and funding organisations.
- Establishing working parties, supported by technical feasibility studies where appropriate, to address the tasks and issues above with final reports at month 20.
- Consolidating these reports into a management and funding proposal to be sent to member states and funding agencies with draft MoU by month 26 to seek agreement by month 38.
