GigaDB: announcing the GigaScience database

Internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee has stated: "Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves” [1], and despite the challenges created due to data production in areas such as genomics growing at rates potentially faster than the ability to store and process it, attempts must still be made to capture and safeguard as much of these precious resources as possible. With the goals of GigaScience journal to maximize data reuse, dissemination, and transparency, having somewhere to host and curate all of the supporting data and tools surrounding this research is essential, and the GigaScience database, GigaDB (http://gigadb.org webcite) is key to achieving this.As can be seen in GigaScience’s first issue, a research article on an epigenomics pipeline [2], in addition to having the raw data available in NCBI [SRP005934], also has this and all the supporting data (totaling 84 GB), such as the epigenomics tracks and the tools created for the pipeline [3], hosted in GigaDB. This dataset is linked and cited in the paper through a citable DOI (Digital Object Identifier), providing stability, and most importantly, additional discoverability and traceability through its ability to be tracked in the same manner as standard journal citations. Working and partnering with the British Library and DataCite consortium (http://datacite.org webcite), these datasets are searchable and harvestable through their central metadata repository. Outside of the environmental sciences, data citation is still quite a new area, and we have worked closely with our publisher BioMed Central to ensure that citation of data follows DCC and DataCite best practice guidelines. In promoting the open-data movement, data is also released under the most open CC0 waiver, cutting any legal red tape [4], and maximizing its potential re-use. As GigaDB uses BGI’s extensive computing infrastructure, it has also been populated with datasets produced by BGI, much of it released in a citable f