Bioinformatics resource portal

Abstract

Bioinformatics is the field of study that applies computational techniques in order to understand and organise biological data. An obstacle found in performing research in bioinformatics is finding the right tool or dataset to use for that research. This obstacle rises from a lack of effort made in research to make tools or datasets reusable. This issue is also present due to a lack of an indexable resource of tools and datasets, as well as a lack of assessment of their reusability. The FAIR guiding principles provide four principles to measure a tool or dataset’s Findability, Accessibiltiy, Interoperability and Reusability, as well as guidelines on how to perform such measurements. This study aims to create a searchable portal of tools, as well as providing an automated assessment tool which provides a FAIR score for tools or datasets based on a set of metrics. This will allow the user to see where the resource struggles to perform and can also refine the score with further information. The FAIR score obtained can provide researchers with a level of trust in the resources they use, as they will be able to properly gauge how Findable, Accessible and Reusable the tool is, and if it can Interoperate with different systems.