PLOS Computational Biology: Ten Simple Rules for Developing Public Biological Databases

"Biological databases are online libraries that contain structured information about living organisms. These databases are indispensable research tools, as they provide convenient, computable access to prior knowledge that is vital for planning future experiments and for discovering new knowledge through data mining—they help us “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Because of their importance to research, the number of public biological databases is increasing. For instance, the number of biological databases published per year in the journal Nucleic Acid Research (NAR) increased dramatically from only two databases in 1980 to 182 in 2016, with the expectation that this single journal will have published over 2,500 database articles by the end of 2017 [1]. Some of these databases are key, sophisticated, user-friendly, long-term, stable resources, built and maintained by professional teams. However, others have been criticized for being difficult to use or having unclear data quality levels [2,3], and many become obsolete over time [4]. So, if you are considering developing a new database, and especially if you are a student or postdoc, please, for the love of science, follow these ten simple rules for creating and maintaining biological databases (and also a similar set of great rules for scientific web resources [5])."