Innovation from open Research resources 

This case study is specific to the life sciences domain and focuses on the use by industry of open bioinformatics resources made available through ELIXIR. These range from databases (e.g., molecular data, scientific literature), tools (e.g., software, workflows), cloud computing, training, and interoperability and other standards. Previous ELIXIR work has shown that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) use public-funded open resources, such as ELIXIR’s, as business models and/or to create added-value products and services that they sell to clients (Garcia et al., 2018; Lauer et al., 2021 ), generating socioeconomic and societal benefits following impact pathways. Building on these mainly qualitative first efforts, this case study will be more systematic and quantitative by nature (via cost-benefit analysis), and (2) will go beyond open data and databases (incl. literature) to include other components of OS such as software and workflows. Another important focus of this case study will be a complementary investigation into the use of ELIXIR’s open bioinformatics resources by industry, as evidenced by mentions in patents, also building on previous ELIXIR work (Bousfield et al., 2016 ).

Usage information is available for a growing number of ELIXIR’s open bioinformatics resources. Users, however, do not typically need to register to use these resources, meaning that it is difficult to disaggregate usage information by sector (i.e., academia vs industry). The relevant evidence of socio-economic and societal impact will hence need to be collated through interviews and/or surveys of SMEs across Europe. For the complementary investigation on patents, a data-driven approach will be used using searches of literature and patent databases.