EBI Search: providing discovery tools for biological metadata in 2025

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Genomics and Proteomics Data Management

Background:

• The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is a key provider of biological and biomedical data resources.
• These resources are crucial for researchers across various scientific disciplines.
• Ensuring open and accessible data is vital for scientific advancement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe recent developments and improvements to the EBI Search service.
• To highlight the unified search capabilities across EMBL-EBI's diverse data resources.
• To showcase the accessibility of these resources for a wide range of users.

Main Methods:

• Development of a unified metadata search engine.
• Implementation of a full-text search engine indexing over 6.5 billion data items.
• Enhancement of a user-friendly website and an OpenAPI-compliant programmatic interface.

Main Results:

• The EBI Search engine now offers a unified search across multiple EMBL-EBI resources.
• Full-text search capabilities have been expanded to over 6.5 billion data entries.
• Improved accessibility through a refined website and programmatic interface.

Conclusions:

• Recent updates enhance the EBI Search service, providing more powerful and accessible data retrieval.
• These improvements support a broad spectrum of users, from experts to casual users, in biological and biomedical research.
• The continued development of EBI Search reinforces EMBL-EBI's commitment to open science and data sharing.