A correspondence we have contributed to has just been published in the BMC Research Notes “Data standardization, sharing and publication series” on the adventures in data-citation and data-release practices surrounding the Sorghum genome that is available in our GigaDB database and that was published last year in Genome Biology . We use Sorghum as an example to highlight the issues surrounding data release and use strong words,

With genetics and genomics being complicated enough, epigenomics adds even more layers of control and regulation of gene expression, and high-throughput global analyses of epigenetic changes further add to the reams of biological information many people are already referring to as the “data-deluge”.

Of the of the many issues needing addressing in this era of the so-called “data deluge” (apologies genomics bingo), on top of the well documented difficulties in computing power, bandwidth and storage keeping pace with data production, less attention has been paid on the efforts required to present and package this biological information to users.

Policies and Standards for Reproducible Research: from theory to practice This month GigaScience co-hosted a session at the Genomic Standards Consortium meeting in Shenzhen on “Policies and Standards for Reproducible Research: from theory to practice.

To tie in with this week’s Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) meeting in Shenzhen, GigaScience is launching a call for submissions to a thematic series of discussion and research from the conference and wider community highlighting best practice in genomics research.  As the 13th meeting of the GSC, the topic this year is “Genomes to Interactions to Communities to Models“ – all areas key to the scope of the journal.

To tie in with this week’s Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) meeting in Shenzhen, GigaScience is launching a call for submissions to a thematic series of discussion and research from the conference and wider community highlighting best practice in genomics research. As the 13th meeting of the GSC, the topic this year is “Genomes to Interactions to Communities to Models” – all areas key to the scope of the journal.

Another incremental step has been achieved for the adoption of the practice of data citation; this week, Nature Biotechnology has included one of our dataset DOIs in their references for the first time.

Lead by researchers at the University of Oxford, a group of more than 30 scientific organizations around the globe, have worked to produce a common standard that will make possible the consistent description of enormous and radically different databases compiled in fields ranging from genetics to stem cell science, to environmental studies.

Today marks the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and as we enter the supposedly auspicious year of the Dragon now is a good opportunity to look towards developments in the nascent field of data publication over the upcoming year. This week marked important announcements of new and improved data publication platforms.

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The Human Variome Project (HVP) Beijing Meeting has officially ended (though a number of delegates will be busy tomorrow at the Advisory Council meeting). The energy and commitment towards better understanding and treatment of heritable diseases displayed by both the speakers and participants was great to see. Peter Taschner’s talk on the Leiden Open (source) Variation Database (LOVD) system was very well received, and a number of