About ELIXIR Norway and NeLS

drawing

What is ELIXIR Norway

ELIXIR Norway is a national node of ELIXIR, the pan-European infrastructure for biological information, supporting life science research and its translation to medicine, environment, the bioindustries and society.

What is ELIXIR Norway providing

ELIXIR Norway provide service, infrastructure, support and training for life science researchers:

Info

ELIXIR Norway support desk can be contacted directly by sending an email to support@elixir.no

What is NeLS and SBI

The Norwegian e-Infrastructure for Life Sciences (NeLS) is a national portal for sharing, analysis and mid-term storage of non-sensitive molecular life science data developed and operated by ELIXIR Norway.

StoreBioInfo (SBI) is for long term storage of project data. A storage quota in this layer is granted upon a successful application to ELIXIR Norway support desk

The architecture of NeLS has a tiered structure, with three natural layers that data can reside in. These are the compute layer (usegalaxy.no), the NeLS storage layer, and the StoreBioinfo layer. All three serve different purposes in terms of usage: from small capacity, very short term immediate storage with fast access available to compute resources, to large capacity, long term storage, with less flexible access methods and longer access time.

What can NeLS be used for?

  • Storage of Life science data
  • Direct data transfer from data producers (e.g. NorSeq)
  • Sharing of data between project collaborators
  • Data analysis in usegalaxy.no
  • Data submission to public data repositories
  • Annotation of datasets (SEEK)

Access to NeLS

Who can use NeLS?

NeLS is accessible to all Norwegian researchers and international research collaborators of their projects.

What type of data can be stored in NeLS?

NeLS is for storage of non-sensitive Life Science data. Please consult the Terms Of Use.

Sensitive data must be stored using other platforms that allows collection, storage and analysis of sensitive research data in a secure environment, such as TSD or the HUNT Cloud"

How to obtain access to NeLS

All users with FEIDE login credentials can access the NeLS Portal at https://nels.bioinfo.no/nels-web/#/. Only prerequisite is that your University/institution need to allow their users to use FEIDE to connect to the NeLS Portal.

Tip

If you are in doubt whether your University/institution has been connected to the NeLS Portal, please contact the ELIXIR Norway support desk by sending an email to support@elixir.no. We can support you to get your institution connected to our service.

To access the NeLS portal, see Accessing NeLS

I don't have FEIDE login credentials

Ii is also possible to login to NeLS via a NeLS idp. You can apply for a NeLS idp here.

Info

NeLS ipd are generted only for users that apply with an institutional email address (your email at your institution) and not to e.g. gmail addresses

Access to SBI

If you have access to NeLS, you also gain access to SBI, given that you are part of a storage project with a storage quota in SBI.

Storage quota in SBI

Who can get storage quotas in SBI?

All research projects with a Norwegian partner with funding from national funding bodies (NFR, Universities, Helseforetak, etc) and EU grants are entitled to store life science data in NeLS. This also includes private companies and governmental research institutions.

Research projects (with a Norwegian partner) that do not fall into the definition above can still apply for a storage quota, but these projects will be treated according to the user contribution model for granting storage to projects by Sigma2.

How can I get a storage quota in SBI?

If your data is generated at one of the Norwegian sequencing core facilities organized in NorSeq, your core facility can help you with the application and directly upload the data to your NeLS project.

If your data is generated elsewhere, you can contact ELIXIR-NO Helpdesk directly and apply for a storage quota in SBI.

Terminology

Warning

This part of the page is still under construction

How safe and secure are data in NeLS

The NeLS storage layer has built-in redundancy against data loss due to hardware failure at disk and server levels.

The StoreBioinfo storage layer is implemented on top of the national research data storage solution NIRD, offered by Sigma2 Uninett A/S. This large capacity, mid term data storage layer is protected against data loss by both hardware redundancy mechanisms and asynchronous geo-replicated storage between two cities in Norway. In addition NIRD implements daily snapshots for the last 7 days and weekly snapshots for the last 6 weeks.

Note

A detailed description of the backup of the system can be found in the NeLS Terms of reference

About usegalaxy.no

What is usegalaxy.no

usegalaxy.no is the national Galaxy server for life science data analysis hosted and maintained by ELIXIR Norway. Galaxy is a web-based platform that provide bioinformatic tools and workflows. usegalaxy.no is open to all Norwegian user and collaborators.

You can read more about Galaxy in the Galaxy Community Hub.

usegalaxy.no is directly connected to your data storage in NeLS. This exclude the need for local copy of your data. You can simply transfer data directly between usegalaxy.no and NeLS.

Who can access usegalaxy.no

If you have access to NeLS, you also have access to usegalaxy.no

Info

For usegalaxy.no user support please contact the ELIXIR Norway support desk by sending an email to support@elixir.no

Further resources

ELIXIR Norway Data Stewardship Wizard

The Data Stewardship Wizard is an international project to help serious researchers and data stewards with building smart Data Management Plans (DMPs) for FAIR Open Science.

ELIXIR Norway offer a dedicated Data Stewardship Wizard instance for life scientists in Norway with tailored guidance. You can use you FEIDE user to log in (given that your FEIDE user is linked to ELIXIR AAI or you can sign up using your email address.

You can find more information on the Data Stewardship Wizard in the DSW user guide.

Contact our helpdesk at support@elixir.no if you need support.

ELIXIR Research Data Management Kit

The ELIXIR Research Data Management Kit (RDMkit) is an online guide containing good data management practices applicable to research projects from the beginning to the end.

ELIXIR NORWAY is contributing to develop and maintain RDMkit as part of the CONVERGE project.

The RDMkit has guidelines, information, and pointers to help you with problems throughout the data’s life cycle. RDMkit supports FAIR data — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable — by-design, from the first steps of data management planning to the final steps of depositing data in public archives.

Warning

This part of the page is still under construction

How to cite us

NeLS publication

Please cite our F1000Research publication on NeLS if you are using NeLS for your project:

Tekle KM, Gundersen S, Klepper K, Bongo LA, Raknes IA, Li X, et al. Norwegian e-Infrastructure for Life Sciences (NeLS). F1000Res [Internet]. 2018 Jun 29 ;7:968. Available from: https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.15119.1

@article{tekle_norwegian_2018,
    title = {Norwegian e-{Infrastructure} for {Life} {Sciences} ({NeLS})},
    volume = {7},
    issn = {2046-1402},
    url = {https://f1000research.com/articles/7-968/v1},
    doi = {10.12688/f1000research.15119.1},
    language = {en},
    urldate = {2019-12-17},
    journal = {F1000Research},
    author = {Tekle, Kidane M. and Gundersen, Sveinung and Klepper, Kjetil and Bongo, Lars Ailo and Raknes, Inge Alexander and Li, Xiaxi and Zhang, Wei and Andreetta, Christian and Mulugeta, Teshome Dagne and Kalaš, Matúš and Rye, Morten B. and Hjerde, Erik and Antony Samy, Jeevan Karloss and Fornous, Ghislain and Azab, Abdulrahman and Våge, Dag Inge and Hovig, Eivind and Willassen, Nils Peder and Drabløs, Finn and Nygård, Ståle and Petersen, Kjell and Jonassen, Inge},
    month = jun,
    year = {2018},
    pages = {968}
}

Please also refer to us in your acknowledgement

If the project was supported after April 2022 please add:

“..............received [bioinformatic/data management/infrastructure] support from ELIXIR Norway, supported by the Research Council of Norway’s grant 322392, the University of Bergen, the University of Oslo, the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences: NMBU”

If the project was supported 2017 - March 2022 please add:

“..............received [bioinformatic/data management/infrastructure] support from ELIXIR Norway, supported by the Research Council of Norway’s grant 270068, the University of Bergen, the University of Oslo, the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences: NMBU”

If the project was supported 2012 - 2017 please add:

“..............received [bioinformatic/data management/infrastructure] support from ELIXIR Norway, supported by the Research Council of Norway’s grant 208481, the University of Bergen, the University of Oslo, the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences: NMBU”

If the project was supported by BioMedData please add:

“..............received data management support from BioMedData and ELIXIR Norway, supported by the Research Council of Norway’s grant 295932”

If the project used the NeLS and SBI infrastructure to store data:

“..............used the NeLS and SBI portal provided by ELIXIR Norway, supported by the Research Council of Norway’s grant [270068|208481] for safe storage and sharing of data.”

If the project used the usegalaxy.no to analyse data:

“..............used usegalaxy.no provided by ELIXIR Norway, supported by the Research Council of Norway’s grant 270068 for data analysis.”