New Wellcome funding model supports the development of EMBL-EBI open data resources

EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) manages the world’s most comprehensive suite of open data resources for the life sciences. Millions of scientists worldwide rely on these data resources. The breadth of usage has been expanding year on year, as researchers generate increasing amounts of data. 

EMBL-EBI’s data resources are collaboratively run with partners worldwide, and supported by a number of funders. Wellcome has been a long-time major funder and supporter of EMBL-EBI data services, as well as a champion for the open sharing of research outputs, and democratic access to those data.  

Five-year consolidated funding arrangement

In recognition of the fundamental importance of sustainable data infrastructure, Wellcome has changed how it funds EMBL-EBI, moving from an award-by-award model to a five-year consolidated arrangement. Going forward, Wellcome will unify its funding for data resources and tools at EMBL-EBI into a single grant with a value of £36 million GBP over five years, starting in 2025. This shift reflects Wellcome’s recognition of the critical nature of open data resources for research, and its dedication to strengthening the foundations of EMBL-EBI and the resources it collaboratively manages.

“Wellcome has been supporting EMBL-EBI since its inception because it recognises the crucial role the institute plays in solving the urgent challenges facing society,” said Michael Dunn, Director of Discovery Research at Wellcome. “New discoveries and innovations rely on scientists sharing and accessing large volumes of data through open data resources like those managed by EMBL-EBI. This change in how we allocate funding to EMBL-EBI is part of a broader desire to create more robust and innovative funding models for the research infrastructures on which modern science is built.”

Opportunities for new efficiencies

The new funding approach presents opportunities for new efficiencies across data resources, countering siloed science. It also continues to support existing EMBL-EBI data resources, enabling innovation in new areas such as artificial intelligence and multimodal research, which leverages different types of data. The funding will also increase EMBL-EBI’s capacity to engage and involve a wider range of users and service delivery partners in low-resource settings. 

“This new funding model with Wellcome gives us the flexibility to join up efforts and maximise efficiencies across data resources,” explained Jo McEntyre, Deputy Director of EMBL-EBI. “Although this is not an increase in Wellcome’s EMBL-EBI funding over the course of the five years, it provides a much more solid foundation to deliver the data resources we manage, and to meet the evolving demands of global life science communities effectively.”

A focus on AI and FAIR data

Alongside meeting the ongoing challenges of managing data scale and diversity, EMBL-EBI plans to co-develop new interfaces to data delivery. Firstly, for AI, the institute will continue to deliver cross-cutting training datasets, enriched and formatted to lower barriers for innovators. EMBL-EBI itself will continue to deploy AI in its processes to increase efficiencies and to bring the fruits of AI to its data resource users. 

Secondly, EMBL-EBI’s data resources will continue to ease the submission of FAIR, linked, multimodal data and maximise the downstream reuse potential for software developers and researchers via easy-to-use interfaces to find and explore data.

Finally, the emphasis on engaging scientists in low resource settings is essential to build an equitable, interoperable and sustainable global data ecosystem. This is crucial for addressing global challenge areas such as human health, infectious disease and biodiversity.

EMBL-EBI is grateful to all the partners and funders that support these essential data resources for the life sciences community, including the EMBL Member States, UK Research and Innovation, Wellcome, the National Institutes of Health, and the European Commission, among others.