Curated Databases in the Life Sciences: The Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project

This report was produced for the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) as a SCARP Life Sciences case study. The DCC SCARP project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), investigates disciplinary attitudes and approaches to data deposit. The study concerned the data curation aspects of the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project (EMAP), a programme funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). The principal goal for EMAP is to develop an expression summary for each gene in the mouse embryo, which collectively has been named the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Gene Expression Database (EMAGE). The purpose of this case study is to profile and scope the work of the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas Project in relation to digital curation processes and activities undertaken by the researchers working on the project, and the users and stakeholders for the services and products provided by the project. One aspect of digital curation is the process of establishing and developing infrastructure to provide for current and future reference materials including the curation, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of the digital assets.