The next challenge: data management, submission and FAIRness in multi-omics experiments

The Workshop “The next challenge: data management, submission and FAIRness in multi-omics experiments” was organised as part of the ELIXIR AllHands Meeting 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. The ELIXIR data platform and several resources are available to submit metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and other Omics data. While multi-omics analyses and data are getting common in more and more research projects, data management, sharing and FAIRness is currently focussing on individual single-omics submissions. In this workshop, several users reported their experience from projects and infrastructures generating multi-omics data, covering individual approaches, good experience and lessons learned. In a second block, the Metabolights and PRIDE repositories and their approach to linking to other-omics data were introduced. Finally, the life-science Omics-DI meta-search engine was presented. After the presentations, local and remote attendees engaged in a lively and constructive discussion. The expected increasing number of multi-omics submissions only underlines the need to improve and harmonise the submission processes, to reduce the friction happening when multiple stakeholders are involved in the data and scholarly publication processes. The efforts that go into FAIR multi-omics experiment data submissions can really bloom if we simplify the re-use of the data. We are convinced that the Bioinformatics community, and ELIXIR in particular, will be instrumental in the coming years, and specifically in the ELIXIR 2024-28 work programme.