Cambridge – Repositive, a software company developing novel tools to improve access to genomic research data, has announced it is now partnering with GigaScience, an open access journal and repository with a focus on big data in biomedical sciences.

The partnership will see Repositive use the range of data from biomedical sciences research from GigaScience to expand and improve the access provided to human genomic data around the world. This will include the indexing of all current human genomic data, the development of tools to allow users to evaluate the accessibility and utility of the data, along with a detailed report to assess the research impact of making the data discoverable.

Fiona Nielsen, CEO of Repositive, said: “GigaScience is one of the key journals in big data and by this collaboration, we are both improving the utility of the GigaScience genomic data as well as expanding access to human genomic data on the Repositive platform. The Repositive platform is now in beta testing and as we add more data sources to it, its capability and effectiveness continues to expand.”

Scott Edmunds, Executive Editor of GigaScience commented: “As a data publisher, hosting and disseminating over 36TB of biological and biomedical data so far, we highlight to data producers the advantages of sharing their outputs. On top of increasing the discoverability of our content, with this collaboration we aim to quantify the value of data sharing.

The partnership secured with GigaScience significantly expands the range of data now available, which already includes data from public repositories such as Array Express, GEO, EGA, dbGaP, alongside data from individual institutions such as GigaScience.

GigaScience will be hosting a Community Genomics track at BGI’s International Conference on Genomics in Shenzhen, China on October 24th, as well as a workshop on Human Genomics data for research in Hong Kong on October 26th featuring the Repositive platform along with other tools for data access and analysis.

The Repositive platform is now in beta testing, including testing by a number of commercial users. When launched the Repositive platform will allow scientists to quickly and easily access data from a range of global sources, and initiate data collaborations with both colleagues and external collaborators.