IMG/VR Week 5

IMG/VR Database

General information about the database

1. What is the name of the database? (link to the home page)
2. What type (or types) of database is it? 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? If curated, is it electronic versus human curation? If human curation, is it in-house staff versus community curation?
3. What individual or organization maintains the database? Public versus private? Large national or multinational entity or small lab group?
4. What is their funding source(s)?

Scientific quality of the database

1. 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?
2. What species are covered in the database? (If it is a very long list, summarize.)
3. Is the database content useful? I.e., what biological questions can it be used to answer?
4. 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?
5. How current is the database? When did the database first go online? How often is the database updated? When was the last update?