The National Center for Genome Analysis and Support (NCGAS) has announced new services to help biological researchers store and share their work, speeding scientific discovery and breakthroughs in many fields of study. NCGAS directors made the announcement at the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) 2013 annual conference in San Diego.

NCGAS will now offer biological researchers storage services for their data in Indiana University's massive archival tape storage system and curated archival storage in the university's persistent digital library. The center is affiliated with the IU Pervasive Technology Institute as a cyberinfrastructure and service center

"These services complement existing national genome data repositories as well as storage services available from our partner organizations," said NCGAS Director William Barnett. "It allows a researcher or a research group to keep data securely for long periods of time, in compliance with funding agency requirements for data management plans. The ability to publish a complete, final data set and associate that with a particular technical publication will be particularly valuable in advancing research."

The NCGAS mission is to enable the US life sciences research community to analyze, understand, and make use of the vast amount of genomic information now available. NCGAS focuses particularly on genome-level assembly, phylogenetics, metagenomics and community genomics. It has also supported computational analysis of genome data with consulting, software, and computational services for nearly two years.

The services announced today include:

• Storage of up to 50 terabytes of research data on IU's Scientific Data Archive tape storage system. These data are stored in duplicate - one copy in Indianapolis and another in Bloomington. Storage is committed for at least three years.

• Services for curation and long-term storage of data sets and final results from genome research in the IUScholarWorks (http://scholarworks.iu.edu) digital repository. Storage of such final data products is unlimited; this system is IU's official data archive. IUScholarWorks data can be made public immediately or be held for a future date determined by the researcher.

• Assistance with grant proposals. NCGAS will write letters of commitment for consulting, computation, and data storage resources to include with grant proposals and assistance with developing data management plans for National Science Foundation (NSF) and NSF grant awards.

NCGAS timed the announcement to coincide with the NSF Advances in Biological Informatics grant solicitation (http://1.usa.gov/193JBF), due August 13. Researchers requesting letters of commitment and help with the solicitation should contact NCGAS by August 8.

NCGAS services are focused on researchers who have NSF funding or who are doing research within the biological areas supported by the NSF. To apply for storage allocations, visit http://ncgas.org//