ELIXIR-CONVERGE D8.2 Workshop to explore and plan the inclusion of tools and data from projects that have diverted towards COVID-19 research

As part of WP8, Task 8.1. Data management support, we aimed to maximise the use of data and tools through the COVID-19 Portal from EU research projects in which EMBL-EBI is a partner (other than VEO and ReCoDID). Teams across the EMBL-EBI organisation have jointly worked in a concerted effort to pull together all available data and tools relevant to COVID-19-related work of any kind. The European COVID-19 Data Portal currently provides access to over 370,000 SARS-COV-2 viral sequences (as raw reads, just to give an example of one data type) as well as an extensive list of other COVID-related tools and resources with 70 entries, both from external sources as well as EMBL-EBI-internally.
The aim of the deliverable D8.2 was to hold a workshop in order to explore and plan the inclusion of tools and data into the COVID-19 Portal from other EU-funded projects where EMBL-EBI is participating. Due to the broad existing inclusion of data from ELIXIR Core and Deposition Databases (greater than 1,000,000 records at the time of writing) and an extensive list of COVID-related tools and resources already embedded into the Portal's "Related resources", the potential to discover any additional tools or data by holding such a workshop was considered to be quite limited.

Therefore, we followed a time and cost-efficient approach of (a) first gathering information through web searches to identify any relevant data and/or tools EC-funded projects within EMBL-EBI may have produced, followed by (b) contacting PIs of these projects individually, in order to confirm that all available data and tools had already been linked into the Portal and no additional resources had accidentally been overlooked.

Our investigation and discussions with PIs of other EC-funded projects confirmed that the tools and resources listed on the COVID-19 Data Portal already include all relevant tools currently available across the various groups and projects at the EMBL-EBI. For the time being no additional work is required to add any further tools to the list presented on the Portal.