A Workshop organised by The Biotechnology Information Strategic Forum, with support from DGXII of the Commission of the European Communities, and held at Purmerend, The Netherlands, May 1997
The workshop - Financing Biotechnology Databases was held at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Purmerend, The Netherlands in May 1997. It was organised by The Biotechnology Information Strategic Forum, with support from DGXII of the Commission of the European Communities.
Conclusions
Biotechnology is crucial to a number of key industries, such as pharmaceutical and agriculture, which are themselves essential to the economic competitiveness of Europe.
Bioinformatics, and the relevant biotechnology databases, are essential to research and development; they are every bit as crucial to the research process as chemical reagents, apparatus and other “traditional” tools. Funders, and senior scientific policy makers, should work to develop long-term, stable, information facilities upon which biotechnology research can be based. This infrastructure will be based upon databases, services and IT developments, all interwoven into a coordinated infrastructure.
Few national and international funding organisations pay long-term support grants for database maintenance, and the majority of biotechnology database funding has come from R&D budgets. While this can be defended when the database is a part of the research project (even as an integral tool), it ceases to be so when the database has grown to become a tool for other researchers.
The growth in bioinformatics is such that there will not be sufficient money in the public purse to maintain all the databases that are required to support the biotechnology R&D environment. Europe should examine how cooperation between the public sector and commercial services can lead to every user being able to best access the data they require. This will require discussions between academics and commercial partners and users, to ensure that the different players all interact with each other to provide the best possible service for the money available. In defining this we must identify what Europe needs in terms of databases and infrastructure to ensure its biotech R&D thrives.
Databases need time to grow to a size where they are useful, and to obtain the trust and recognition they require to form an essential part in a research story. They need to be curated, validated, maintained and archived for the widest group of users. Such demands require a stable, assured, funding structure. Under current funding rules, it is almost inevitable that many excellent databases will eventually cease to be funded as they will be unable to obtain funds through R&D programmes. Unless steps are taken to develop new structures, this will lead to their disappearance and the research community will suffer. Furthermore, as a database ceases to be useful when it is no longer updated, the previous effort and investment is also wasted. There are numerous examples of this having happened in the microbiology field and it must not be allowed to happen in the new bioinformatics areas.
The present funding regime is unsatisfactory and unsustainable. While R&D money can be used to start a database, long-term, stable funding, or commercial market practices, or both, are required when the database is mature and exploitable.
Nevertheless, databases should always serve a market need. In general the market should therefore be used to finance such projects, and new forms of database funding will have to be found. Models to be researched should include “commercialisation” but also new charging algorithms where factual (sometimes publicly funded) databases are supported through being offered alongside commercial services. Joint marketing can save effort, and it is clear that placing different databases in the same environment can be cost efficient. Funding authorities should also encourage realistic attitudes towards the cost of information by making provision within R&D grants for the purchase of information and the access to the relevant databases (N.B., the situation at Pfizer shows that industry is willing to pay for critical information).
There is a clear role for the public funding authorities in the development and support of some databases. Basic factual, databases (e.g. the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Data Library) should be funded from public resources and made available on the “free in/free out” principle. Even so, such funding should not come from R&D budgets but should be drawn from infrastructure funds designed and administered to best serve the market needs they support. Such funds must not distort the information market place and so careful discussion with ALL information providers must take place to ensure that users and producers are able to operate in clearly defined surroundings.
The global electronic village means that Europe must also investigate better working relationships with the US and Japan to ensure that each benefits and thrives without undermining the other.
Bioinformatics therefore requires large investments from both public and private organisations. This expenditure must be protected and investors have to be given a fair chance to recoup their money. The present American policy of distributing added-value databases such as MEDLINE for below the cost price greatly distorts the market and threatens, not only all the other competitive databases that have to earn their living through direct sales, but also the information infrastructure biotechnology relies upon; investors have to be protected and Europe must ensure that it too continues to play a major role in the production and use of international biotechnology information services. More effort and cooperation is required. The EC should support such initiatives and should also recognise that although the scientific information sector is not that large, its importance to key industries such as agriculture and pharmaceutical is such that it is in fact an essential enabling industry. If access to information is denied, or if all information sources become American, European research will suffer enormously.