Social support for collaboration and group awareness in life science research teams

Background: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have revolutionarily reshaped the landscape of '-omics' research areas. They produce a plethora of information requiring specific knowledge in sample preparation, analysis and characterization. Additionally, expertise and competencies are required when using bioinformatics tools and methods for efficient analysis, interpretation, and visualization of data. These skills are rarely covered in a single laboratory. More often the samples are isolated and purified in a first laboratory, sequencing is performed by a private company or a specialized lab, while the produced data are analyzed by a third group of researchers. In this scenario, the support, the communication, and the information sharing among researchers represent the key points to build a common knowledge and to meet the project objectives.

Results: We present ElGalaxy, a system designed and developed to support collaboration and information sharing among researchers. Specifically, we integrated collaborative functionalities within an application usually adopted by Life Science researchers. ElGalaxy, therefore, is the result of the integration of Galaxy, i.e., a Workflow Management System, with Elgg, i.e., a Social Network Engine.

Conclusions: ElGalaxy enables scientists, that work on the same experiment, to collaborate and share information, to discuss about methods, and to evaluate results of the individual steps, as well as of entire activities, performed during their experiments. ElGalaxy also allows a greater team awareness, especially when experiments are carried out with researchers which belong to different and distributed research centers.