August 13, 2010 – Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Madrid have developed a tool that can discover and automatically classify bioinformatics resources from the scientific literature. They have even used it to compile a searchable index of software and databases.

This news was brought to our attention by GenomeWeb.com in their article, “Spanish Team Develops Tool to Help Researchers Stay on Top of the Bioinformatics ‘Resourceome’”.  This comprehensive article details the process used to build the index, called the Bioinformatics Resource Inventory, or BIRI, which they have been working on since 2008. Automatic index generation is certainly advanced, but without a solid taxonomy to rely on, the results could be shallow. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ISO/ANSI/NISO compliant taxonomies.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.