Howdy Biologists!
This morning I finally released the Biologists Open Access Database v1. This database holds a variety of open-access data, software, and resources specifically curated for those working in the Biological sciences.
Luckily I had some free time and was able to get this database from idea to implementation in about 48 hours. In fact, it took longer to set up the website with the proper infrastructure to host it in a meaningful way! In fact, it is now under the library hierarchy. Once I’ve added more material to the library ill make a separate blog post about that.
In short, this database is created in R shiny with a connection to a google sheet that I can continually update with new open-access sources! If you have any resources that can be added just let me know! As the database updates on page refresh, it is incredibly easy to add new sources, update existing sources, and even make large sweeping changes to the database as I see fit.
At this stage, I largely focused on function over form. The basic features are links to the data sources, a series of user-inputted tags, and fuzzy searching in the description of each source of data. If you’re curious how this works, the R shiny application makes each card via html based on the input data source. If a user filters the data, it simply recreates the HTML cards based on the subsetted data. Its a rather elegant solution that I found on the great wide internet!
As this database just released it is rather basic and lacks meaningful features. Future editions will see improved searching, improved UI, better integration into the website, improved mobile UI, and of course more data sources. Luckily, I set up this database in such a way that minor incremental changes are quite easy to include.
Alongside the open-access nature of the database, the underlying data is available to view via this link. Eventually, I will properly setup the R shiny application for that to be found on my Github page as well. The goal in the future is that we can hold courses around these datasets where we conduct a research project from start to finish. Too many tasks for the future!!!!
Hope you enjoy! If you have any suggestions for improvement feel free to shoot them my way!
Thanks
-D