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Here we planned to provide information from potential service providers for a future grid.
The questions we wanted them to answer are:
- Is anonymous access to your databases acceptable? Or must you always know who is using your data?
- If anonymous access is unacceptable, why is this? e.g. is it mis-use of the data which concerns you so an audit trail is required, or is it that the data is only available for users from bioinformatics centres of subscribed institutions?
- If you must know the identity of the user, would it be sufficient to know that the user is a legitimate researcher from a life sciences department of a subscribed institution, without actually knowing his/her name?
University of Glasgow
Although we have tried since February 2006 we have not received a response from the academic in University of Glasgow recommended by Richard Sinnott as a data service provider for the BLAST portal. The last contact was during May, when Richard Sinnott (NeSC) sent a message again to sponsor our request and to explain some local benefits for the service provider to share their experiences. No response was received.
NCBI
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the US provides facilities for the use of gene and protein sequence information, the scientific literature (MEDLINE), molecular structures, and related resources, in biomedicine.
The ESP-GRID project received a reply to the emails on 12 April 2006.
Subject: FW: Question from University of Oxford based e-Science research project Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:45:09 -0400 From: Sayers, Eric (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [E] <sayers@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov> To: <alun.edwards@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk> CC: <sayers@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov> Dear Colleague, In general, information is provided on our home page and the Disclaimer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/disclaimer.html There are no logins required to access any of our databases. Let me know if you have other questions. Regards, Eric ___________________ Eric W. Sayers, PhD NCBI/NLM/NIH Building 38A, Room 3S314K 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894 sayers@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The links provided were:
NCBI home page http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
NCBI copyright and disclaimers http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/disclaimer.html
Service Provider evaluation
After a few more attempts to gain feedback we stopped pursuing the Service Providers.