Motivation: The public web-based biological database infrastructure is a so
urce of both wonder and worry. Users delight in the ever increasing amounts
of information available, database administrators and curators worry about
long-term financial support. AM earlier study of 153 biological databases
(Ellis and Kalumbi, Nature Biotechnol., Id, 1323-1324, 1998) determined tha
t near future (1-5 year) funding for over two-thirds of them was uncertain.
More detailed data are required to determine the magnitude of the problem
and offer possible solutions.
Methods: This study examines the finances and use statistics of ct Sew of t
hese organizations in more depth, and reviews several economic models that
may help sustain them.
Results: Six organizations were studied Their administrative overhead is fa
irly low; non-administrative personnel and computer related costs account f
or 77% of expenses. One smaller, more specialized US database, in 1997, had
60% of total access from US domains; a majority (56%) of its US accesses c
ame front commercial domains, although only 2% of the 153 databases origina
lly studied received any industrial support. The most popular model used to
gain industrial support is asymmetric pricing. preferentially charging the
commercial users of a database. At least five biological databases have re
cently begun using this model. Advertising is another model which may be us
eful for the more general, more heavily used sires. Microcommerce has promi
se, especially for databases that do nor attract advertisers, but needs fur
ther testing. The least income reported for any of the databases studied wa
s $50 000/year; applying this rate to 400 biological databases (a lower lim
it of the number of such databases, many of which require far larger resour
ces) would mean annual support need of at least $20 million. To obtain this
level of support is challenging, yet failure to accept the challenge could
be catastrophic.