--- author: - contributor_roles: [] family: Edmunds given: Scott url: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6444-1436 blog: authors: null community_id: 52db0518-e228-4260-8c54-c4e323b2569d created: 1675555200 current_feed_url: null description: Data driven blogging from the GigaScience editors doi: https://doi.org/10.59350/gigablog favicon: https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/52db0518-e228-4260-8c54-c4e323b2569d/logo feed_format: application/atom+xml feed_url: http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/feed/atom/ filter: null generator: Other home_page_url: https://gigasciencejournal.com/blog issn: null language: eng license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode prefix: '10.59350' relative_url: null secure: false slug: gigablog status: archived subfield: '1311' title: GigaBlog updated: null use_api: null container: GigaBlog date: '2014-08-22T00:00:00+00:00' date_updated: '2025-12-06T10:41:31+00:00' guid: http://finaloriginalblogs.dev/gigablog/?p=1239 identifier: https://doi.org/10.59350/55qav-7ty83 image: http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK-300x224.jpeg images: - height: '224' sizes: '(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px' src: http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK-300x224.jpeg srcset: http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK-300x224.jpeg, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK.jpeg width: '300' - height: '495' sizes: '(max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px' src: http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-1024x768.jpeg srcset: http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-1024x768.jpeg, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-300x225.jpeg, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-768x576.jpeg, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot.jpeg width: '660' issn: null keywords: - Technology - Bioinformatics - Conferences - Data Publishing - GigaDB lang: en license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode rid: 3s3jn-kty64 rights: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode summary: Data Club is Gonna Show You How As science is supposed to be about "standing on the shoulders of giants", we all know sharing scientific data should be a good thing, but there are obviously large technical and cultural challenges holding things back. title: Ain't No Party like a Bring Your Own Data Party! url: https://wayback.archive-it.org/22098/2025-05-01T17:13:42Z/http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/aint-no-party-like-a-bring-your-own-data-party version: v1 --- **Data Club is Gonna Show You How**\ ![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK-300x224.jpeg){.alignleft .size-medium .wp-image-1976 loading="lazy" decoding="async" srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK-300x224.jpeg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_Bqi5QTVCUAEAHwK.jpeg 599w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" width="300" height="224"}As science is supposed to be about \"standing on the shoulders of giants\", we all know sharing scientific data should be a good thing, but there are obviously large technical and cultural challenges holding things back. Things are a long way from the [Jimmy Wales](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales "Jimmy Wales wikipedia quote"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} \"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge\" utopian dream, but some research fields (e.g. genomics) have done a better job making data available than others. Unfortunately sharing complicated scientific data usually isn\'t as easy as just dumping it in a dropbox folder, and to be reused scientific data needs to be properly structured, curated and described. This process of providing sufficient metadata and instructions for reuse can take considerable a lot of time, effort and expense, so sufficient incentives are needed to make this effort. While a few specific fields and journals (including ourselves and [now PLOS](http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2014/03/08/plos-new-data-policy-public-access-data/ "PLOS data policy change"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}) have strict policies and mandates enforcing data deposition, more carrots are also required. While we written about positive incentives and crediting good practice through prizes like the [BMC Open Data Award](http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/gigablog/2013/10/02/open-data-for-the-win/ "Open Data FTW!"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} (of which some of our datasets have now won [two years running](http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/gigablog/2014/07/17/bioinformatics-birthdays-and-booze-at-boston-bosc/ "BOSC 2014 and open data award blog"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}), there is scope for further schemes to promote the liberation of the huge amounts of very useful research datasets out there. Data publication (such as the [Data Note](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/data_note "Data Note I4A"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} articles we\'ve been publishing) is supposed to be one mechanism of incentivizing these efforts, but it can still be difficult for authors to organize their data, as well as know exactly what information is required with this still new and unconventional article type. There may be a need to for data producers to meet data curators and standards experts and go through in person some of their example datasets to lower the barriers of entry and make this process more understandable. **Don\'t Stop Curatin\'**\ To try to address this issue, this June, supported by our [BBSRC UK-China partnering award](http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/pa/grants/AwardDetails.aspx?FundingReference=BB/J020265/1 "BBSRC grant award"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}, we and the [ISA Team](http://isacommons.org/ "ISA commons homepage"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} at the Oxford e-Research Centre organized our first \"data hackathon\" at our [newly refurbished BGI Hong-Kong](http://www1.investhk.gov.hk/news-item/mainland-scientific-research-company-bgi-expands-its-hong-kong-operations/ "BGI HK refurb article"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} offices. Metabolomics seemed an ideal area to support, as the field is starting to produce larger and larger scale datasets, and there are now several public repositories linked through the new [MetaboleXchange portal](http://metabolomexchange.org/ "metaboleXchange"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} to take this data, but they are all in need of more data and users to prove their utility. The largest of these (with [49 public datasets currently available](http://www.ebi.ac.uk/metabolights/browse "browse metabolights"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}) is the EBI Metabolights database. Participants at our first data get together were a number of young scientists and omics data producers from local universities (including Hong Kong Baptist University and BGI), as well as some of the UK metabolomics standards community including the EBI and [Birmingham Metabolomics Centre](http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/metabolomics/index.aspx "MetaboBrum homepage"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}. Timed just before the [Metabolomics Society meeting](http://metabolomics2014.org/ "Metabolomics 2014"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} that we subsequently attended in Tsuroaka in Japan, the goal was to establish common standards and curation practices for omics data as well implement new [ISA software](http://isatab.sourceforge.net "ISA software page"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} functionalities to facilitate deposition to the [EBI Metabolights repository](http://www.ebi.ac.uk/metabolights/ "Metabolights homepage"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} and support feature requests from journals using ISA formats, such as ourselves. A further important part was the \'bring your own data\' track, allowing data producers to interact with the more curatorial groups and learn how to best report and structure their work for publication and deposition. On top of curators, editors were also on hand to provide feedback on the writing up as Data Note articles, one of the main incentives for early data release. Hackathons are always intense but productive affairs, and the fruitful interactions over the duration of the meeting resulted in the delivery of a new ISA-Tab viewing component for web browsers (see [this DOI](http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11084 "Zenodo ISA code DOI"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} for the code and [this sourceforge page](http://isatab.sourceforge.net/examples.html "sourceforge examples page"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} for examples), and the conversion of Metabolights ISA-Tab content to RDF and 5 experiments, accounting for nearly 750 samples worth of data being generated. On top of boosting the data in Metabolights and [GigaDB](http://gigadb.org/ "GigaDB homepage"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}, some of these outputs are currently being written up as Data Note articles and peer reviewed by us (see [guidelines](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/data_note "Data Note I4A"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}), so watch this space for the results. The work also led to sharing and refining curation guidelines, and we presented many of the outputs the following week at a workshop in Tsuruoka (see Rob and Scott\'s [slides](http://www.slideshare.net/GigaScience/metabolomics-soc-talk "GigaSlides Metabolomics 2014"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} [here](http://metabolomics2014.org/index.php/program/sessions/workshops#standards "Metabolomics 2014 workshop program"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}, and the Philippe from the ISA-teams slides [here](http://www.slideshare.net/proccaserra/metabolomics-2014japanstandards "PRS slides"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}). Finally, efforts to deliver an API supporting the programmatic creation of ISA-Tab documents are well under way. **Say Goodbye**\ On top of the busy and productive work schedule there was also a useful social and networking side to the occasion, as a further incentive for participation was the chance to mix, learn from and interact with a diverse group of researcher and data experts, as well as experience some of the amazing culinary and touristic sights of Hong Kong (see picture).\ ![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-1024x768.jpeg){.wp-image-1977 .aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-300x225.jpeg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot-768x576.jpeg 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hackathon_shot.jpeg 1071w" sizes="(max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px" width="660" height="495"}\ After completing this hackathon, we discovered that in the same week the Dutch node of ELIXIR and the [Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences (DTL)](http://www.dtls.nl/dtl/ "DTL homepage"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"} organized and hosted an almost identical event. Termed by them a [\"Bring Your Own Data\" (BYOD) party](http://www.dtls.nl/dtl/news/successful-first-edition-of-bring-your-own-data-workshop.html "DTL BYOD party blog"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}, this first event brought together data producers with experts in semantic web technologies to make their data available in a Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, or [\"FAIR\"](http://www.datafairport.org/ "See FAIRport"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}, manner. They found their experiences equally productive and fruitful, and ELIXIR-NL and the DTL are keen to promote future events. We wholeheartedly endorse this as well, and for our future events will likely co-opt their BYOD title. Owing to the success of these first hackathons and BYOD events, the same teams will be organizing follow-up meetings. We will keep you posted and, if you are interested in joining, do get in touch with us and the ISA group (isatools@googlegroups.com). **A shorter version of this article was highlighted in the [August MetaboNews newsletter](http://www.metabonews.ca/Aug2014/MetaboNews_Aug2014.htm "MetaboNews August 2014"){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}.** [Save]{style="border-radius: 2px; text-indent: 20px; width: auto; padding: 0px 4px 0px 0px; text-align: center; font: bold 11px/20px 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #ffffff; background: #bd081c no-repeat scroll 3px 50% / 14px 14px; position: absolute; opacity: 1; z-index: 8675309; display: none; cursor: pointer; top: 1484px; left: 68px;"} The post [Ain\'t No Party like a Bring Your Own Data Party!](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/aint-no-party-like-a-bring-your-own-data-party/){rel="nofollow"} appeared first on [GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.