Influenza Research Database
From LMU BioDB 2017
Revision as of 20:21, 4 October 2017 by Emmatyrnauer (talk | contribs) (→General information about the database: editing outline and adding some information)
Contents
General information about the database
The database we chose is the Influenza Research Database
Type of Database
- What biological information (type of data) does it contain? (sequence, structure, model organism, or specialty [what?])
- What type of data source does it have?
- primary versus secondary ("meta")
- curated versus non-curated
- electronic versus human curation
- in-house staff versus community curation
Maintenance
- What individual or organization maintains the database?
- public versus private
- large national or multinational entity or small lab group
Funding
Scientific quality of the database
- Does the content appear to completely cover its content domain?
- How many records does the database contain?
- What claims do the database owners make about coverage in the corresponding paper?
- What species are covered in the database?
- Is the database content useful? I.e., what biological questions can it be used to answer?
- Is the database content timely?
- Is there a need in the scientific community for such a database at this time?
- Is the content covered by other databases already?
- When did the database first go online?
- How often is the database updated?
- When was the last update?
General utility of the database to the scientific community
- Are there links to other databases? Which ones?
- Is it convenient to browse the data?
- Is it convenient to download the data?
- In what file formats are the data provided?
- Are they standard or non-standard formats?
- Evaluate the “user-friendliness” of the database: can a naive user quickly navigate the website and gather useful information?
- Is the website well-organized?
- Does it have a help section or tutorial?
- Are the search options sensible?
- Run a sample query. Do the results make sense?
- Access: Is there a license agreement or any restrictions on access to the database?
Summary judgment
- Would you direct a colleague unfamiliar with the field to use it?
- Is this a professional or hobby database?
Some Definitions
- Electronic curation occurs when someone writes a program to add information to a database record from another database.
- Manual curation occurs when a human reviews the information being added to a record to validate it as true.
- In-house is when the human works for the database organization.
- Community is when the database allows members of the scientific community that don't work for the database organization to add information to the record.