Financing Biotechnology Databases

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.

BIOREP, an umbrella covering national databases -- Harrie Lalieu

BIOREP (Permanent Inventory of Biotechnology Research in the EU Member States) was started in March 1987. This database, covering publicly funded biotechnology research in the member states, aims at supporting R&D, by helping researchers and industry to find partners and expertise and to map R&D from the grant to the paper.

BIOREP focuses on national research projects and structures information coming from many scattered and heterogeneous information resources. National focal points collect national information and send it in a standard form to the KNAW for integrating into a common database. There has been much praise for this cooperation, and the national focal points are collaborating loyally; some have reported that the database has proven to be of significant advantage to both researchers and industry to find partners for EU biotechnology research projects and in reviewing current activities in specific areas of research.

Unfortunately, BIOREP has not yet succeeded in becoming really reliable in terms of (nearly) full coverage and currency of the data. Even the EC has not managed to persuade all their grant receivers to register with the database, although the project does locate most of the relevant research projects from other EC registers such as their “grant database”, and some scientists honestly believe that they give away “too much” information by registering in these databases. National focal points therefore rely mostly on national data that are readily available or easy to trace. Covering everything would mean more staff and money and so the databases are incomplete and, therefore, perhaps not as useful as one would hope. The interest and the potency to collect the data is there, but the question is how to get the national authorities commitment for additional national funding for an international database? Here we have a case where the EC is asking national governments to do something for a European cause; but it is difficult to persuade the Member States that this need has to be met when, in some cases, the national interests in such an area are, for instance, being met by a commercial company (e.g. the UK has a series of products emanating from the commercial sector).

As yet BIOREP has been available for free. However, this probably cannot continue. The EC remains the obvious funder but has no budget to maintain the database — unlike AGREP, the equivalent programme run in DG VI which has a mandate and funds to maintain a database of agricultural research. BIOREP should therefore probably look to raise its own income but usage has been poor and national files exist in many countries which would dilute the income. Nevertheless, in principle, one might introduce a licence fee as soon as BIOREP becomes a really reliable and advanced database. One might argue that putting data together from a lot of sources and disclosing them means substantial added value and why should not people pay for this? But many, if not most people, will surely stick to the view that this type of information should be free. For some countries free and unfettered access to BIOREP for their research communities might even be a condition for further participation. BIOREP has some cost recovery potential, but is too small to survive on its own. If it is to remain free, will it be possible to maintain the dual commitment for ever and ever? If one would agree on a future fee, how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem: only a fee for quality (commercial approach), but additional money needed to arrive at and maintain the quality desired?

There are therefore many questions and only a few answers. Given that public funding will probably not go on for ever then the key point has to be .... “who wants the database”? If EC administrators need the data they should pay for it and so we have parallels to the funding policies mentioned in Cameron’s talk. If the market requires this information, it will have to buy it; but at present there is little evidence that the commercial route will work as the database is mounted on DIMDI but enjoys little use. The database is however used via the project’s own web site.

This might be because the market is not sure as to what the product is and offers. BIOREP is now part of ADLIB which offers an environment in which three commercial scientific literature databases can be linked to a variety of factual and full-text databases in biotechnology. Various subscription options and market solutions will be tested. BIOREP is one of the small databases that has been loaded in order to see what the user’s response is and how the usage might be raised in this linked environment. This might lead to a market-driven scenario where BIOREP gains fees to reimburse the national and central costs. Until then, BIOREP can only look back at its funding history

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