User Development and Support in a Community-Driven Analysis Platform for Systems Biology

The Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) is a community-driven research platform designed for discovery, knowledge creation, and sharing. The open-access platform integrates data and analysis tools into reproducible notebooks called Narratives. KBase provides access to DOE computing infrastructure for running applications, enables collaborative research and publishing of findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) analyses. KBase’s 40,000 users come from a broad range of experience levels and research interests, thus characterizing the user base and targeting engagements is crucial to grow and support the scientific communities using the platform for research. In this poster we share our models for enabling users through training and documentation development, social platforms for community communication, and education materials development.

The team works to support users to develop skills and knowledge of computational biology through user development and support activities in order to advance their research. User development activities include hosting workshops and webinars to demonstrate the features and analytical capabilities of the platform. Workshops are designed to communicate scientific content knowledge, support institutional research needs, and facilitate collaboration between research groups. Webinars are broadcast to a global audience and showcase powerful workflows, new tools and features, and speakers from community developers to subject matter experts.

User support is provided through a help board that allows users to report bugs or ask questions to be addressed by project members. User help tickets are public so that questions and answers are findable by future users. Users may also submit new feature requests to inform platform development to better serve their needs. This board is supported by dedicated staff, dedicated subject matter experts, and rotating developers.

Additionally, the KBase Educators Program supports professors and teachers by developing curriculum for computational biology. This program includes biology and data science instructors teaching students at community colleges, primarily undergraduate, and doctoral research institutions that represent diverse populations, including Minority-Serving and Emerging Research Institutions. The program uses accessible and reproducible modules to encourage students without programming skills or access to additional computational resources.

Through each of these approaches, KBase provides a platform that ensures research software reaches the end-user biologists and data scientists enabling them to fully utilize these sophisticated tools and share knowledge in a FAIR manner across the scientific community.