ELIXIR-NL

Infrastructure and User Services 

As a European research infrastructure that integrates life science data, tools, and expertise across national nodes, ELIXIR provides a framework for managing and sharing vast amounts of biological data while ensuring interoperability through the adoption of standards and best practices. ELIXIR helps define those standards and best practices, and coordinates activities in data management, bioinformatics training, computational workflows, and interoperability to enable open and reproducible science. 
As the Dutch Node, ELIXIR-NL provides leadership in data and research software stewardship, compute infrastructure, promotes the FAIR (Findable-Accessible-Interoperable-Reusable) principles, and develops standards. Specifically, ELIXIR-NL leads initiatives in semantic interoperability, federated data analysis, bioinformatics training and the Research Software Ecosystem. In these efforts, ELIXIR-NL coordinates with national and international partners to improve data and tool sharing and reuse in support of research in health, agriculture, and biodiversity. ELIXIR-NL has a leading role in 3 of 5 Platforms, 10 of 18 research application domain-orientated Communities, and 4 out of 10 Focus Groups.

ELIXIR nodes provide over 500 services, including open access to essential services known as Core Data Resources and Recommended Interoperability Resources, software and workflow platforms, training programs, and cloud-based computational resources. Researchers can access bioinformatics tools, pipelines, and standardized metadata frameworks to enhance data-driven discovery across the life sciences. 
ELIXIR-NL services include two interoperability resources (MOLGENIS data management suite and BridgeDb mapper between databases), FAIR service suite, WikiPathways database, and training resources. ELIXIR-NL strengthens the European research ecosystem and ensures that life science data and tools remain accessible, reusable, and impactful. 

Examples/description of the type of research    

ELIXIR-NL is an essential enabler for all digital life sciences. As backbone infrastructure it supports research across the entire life science spectrum, including cellular and molecular research, human data and translational research and biodiversity, food security and pathogens. For example, rare disease, cancer, COVID-19, biodiversity, plant, microbiome, omics, toxicology, Food & Nutrition research.
Research publications focus on improving data management, interoperability, and accessibility in life sciences, enhancing research reproducibility, sustainability, and inclusivity:

• Data Integration and Mapping: data identifiers for better interoperability, improving research through standard protocols for data management.
• Microbial Communities and Systems Biology: Infrastructure for quantitative research on microbial communities and applying systems biology.
• Data FAIRification: Applying FAIR principles to life science data, including FAIR data stations and frameworks for better data management.
• Workflow and Data Analysis Tools: Enhancing biomedical workflows with platforms like Galaxy, Docker, and Jupyter to handle large-scale biological data efficiently.
• Rare Disease and Health Data: Improving rare disease registries and making healthcare data more accessible and reusable.
• Metadata and Provenance Management: Establishing standardized metadata schemas and tools for bioinformatics studies and metadata validation.
• Cross-Disciplinary Training and Collaboration: Advancing training infrastructures for life scientists, with a focus on FAIR principles and collaborative environments.
• Personalized Medicine and Multi-Omics: Integrating multi-omics data (genomics, proteomics) for personalized medicine.
• Bioinformatics Benchmarks: Benchmarking bioinformatics workflows to ensure high-quality data analysis.
• Sustainability and Long-term Data Stewardship: Creating infrastructures for data sharing and long-term stewardship, with emphasis on FAIR principles.

How to access the infrastructure?   

 Most of ELIXIR's digital services are open access. However, to preserve the integrity and quality of databases and registries, modifying the content in these resources typically requires a login. The Life Science Login (LS Login), originally developed by ELIXIR as the Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure service, is now used more broadly across European digital infrastructures to link researchers’ organizational or other credentials to sign in and access services, thereby allowing service providers to manage access rights of their users, research groups or international projects.