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NCBI News, September 2013

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Try the new My NCBI Feature: SciENcv

Thursday, September 26, 2013

The National Institutes of Health has issued an invitation to researchers to test the beta version of the Science Experts Network (SciENcv).  SciENcv is a new feature available in My NCBI that helps users create an online professional profile that can be made public to share with others.  The addition of this new feature complements My NCBI’s My Bibliography which aids users in managing a list of their citations (journal articles, books/chapters, patents, presentations and meetings) which can be saved directly from PubMed or manually added using My Bibliography templates.

Currently, the beta version of SciENcv enables researchers to quickly assemble the information for and generate an NIH biographical sketch (biosketch).  My Bibliography users and eRA Commons account holders who have linked their eRA account to My NCBI will find their SciENcv profile automatically populated with relevant data.  This information can be modified and users can add information about their education, employment, research activities, publications, honors, research grants, and other professional contributions.  In addition,  an ORCID® iD can be included in the SciENcv profile.  

Future plans for this project include the ability to generate alternative biographical sketch formats so that users can create and electronically submit their data to many federal agencies.

SciENcv is a cooperative project requested by the Federal Demonstration Partnership. Seven federal science agencies formed an interagency workgroup to develop the concept:

  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Science Foundation
  • Department of Defense
  • Department of Energy
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture
  • and Smithsonian Institution

SciENcv is being built by the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) under the direction of the workgroup.  For additional details on the mission and guiding principles of the SciENcv project, please see the project page.

For more information, see:

Comments Requested: NIH genomic data sharing policy

Friday, September 20, 2013

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking public comments on the draft Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) Policy that promotes sharing, for research purposes, of human and non-human genomic data generated from NIH-supported and NIH-conducted research.

The draft GDS Policy describes the responsibilities of investigators and institutions for the submission of genomic data to the NIH and the use of controlled-access data obtained from dbGaP or other NIH databases. It also addresses issues and considerations pertaining to informed consent, data management and intellectual property.

To read the proposed policy and learn how to submit comments, please go to the Federal Register NIH Draft GDS Policy page.

RefSeq release 61 now available

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The complete RefSeq release 61 contains 41,958,567 records, 33,139,114 proteins, 4,528,216 RNAs, and sequences from 29,414 different organisms. The new release reflects SNP Build 138 and includes human annotation 105 with new gene model splice variants from RNA-Seq data. For additional information on the new splice variants, see the NCBI News item about human annotation release 105. More details about RefSeq release 61 are in the release statistics and the release notes.

A new NCBI Insights post about the use of NCBI Data for scientific discovery

Monday, September 16, 2013

A new NCBI Insights blog post highlights how three research groups reused data from NCBI to make important discoveries.

Read about these case studies:

  • "Identifying Common Genes and Networks in Multi-Organ Fibrosis" using GEO data
  • "Predicting Adverse Drug Reactions Using Publicly Available PubChem BioAssay Data" from PubChem 
  • "Prediction of Susceptibility to Major Depression by a Model of Interactions of Multiple Functional Genetic Variants and Environmental Factors" with the help of dbGaP data

New PubChem social media sites help keep users up-to-date!

Thursday, September 05, 2013

The PubChem Project has several new ways for users interested in the chemical and bioactivity resource to learn about announcements, updates and new tools.

These include:

In addition to being able to follow the new PubChem social media streams, a new “SHARE” button on the top of PubChem record pages allows users to share PubChem pages with friends and colleagues.

Read more about the Social Media Campaign and the new SHARE feature in the first first PubChem Blog posting!