The Value and Impact of the European Bioinformatics Institute

Executive Summary

Introduction

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), located on the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK, manages public life science data on a very large scale, making a rich resource of information freely available to the global life science community. EMBL-EBI is one of a handful of organisations in the world involved in global efforts to exchange information, set standards, develop new methods, and curate complex genome information.

We present here the results of a quantitative and qualitative study of the Institute, examining the value and impact of its work. Our focus is the economic impact and can be seen as complementary to traditional academic measures, such as citation counts.

This study was conducted as part of an on-going programme, led by EMBL-EBI, to develop a framework and evidence base for demonstrating how the Institute captures and curates the increasingly vast output of genome research and allows it to be easily located, understood, and applied.

Key Findings

The qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal that EMBL-EBI services are utilised widely and valued highly by their user community.

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