Life sciences are yielding huge data sets that underpin scientific discoveries fundamental to improvement in human health, agriculture and the environment. In support of these discoveries, a plethora of databases and tools are deployed, in technically complex and diverse implementations, across a spectrum of scientific disciplines. The corpus of documentation of these resources is fragmented across the Web, with much redundancy, and has lacked a common standard of information. The outcome is that scientists must often struggle to find, understand, compare and use the best resources for the task at hand.Here we present a community-driven curation effort, supported by ELIXIR-the European infrastructure for biological information-that aspires to a comprehensive and consistent registry of information about bioinformatics resources. The sustainable upkeep of this Tools and Data Services Registry is assured by a curation effort driven by and tailored to local needs, and shared amongst a network of engaged partners.As of November 2015, the registry includes 1785 resources, with depositions from 126 individual registrations including 52 institutional providers and 74 individuals. With community support, the registry can become a standard for dissemination of information about bioinformatics resources: we welcome everyone to join us in this common endeavour. The registry is freely available at https://bio.tools.

Albert Ludwigs Universität Freiburg Fahnenbergplatz 79085 Freiburg

Bioinformatics Centre Department of Biology University of Copenhagen Denmark

Bioinformatics CRS4 Italy

Bioinformatics Research Centre Denmark

Bologna Biocomputing Group University of Bologna Italy

Center for Biological Sequence Analysis Department of Systems Biology Technical University of Denmark Denmark

Center for Biological Sequence Analysis Department of Systems Biology Technical University of Denmark Denmark Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences University of Copenhagen Denmark

Central European Institute of Technology Czech Republic

Centre d'Informatique pour la Biologie C3BI Institut Pasteur France

Centre for Functional Genomics and Biochips Faculty of Medicine University of Ljubljana Slovenia

Centre for Molecular Bioinformatics Dept of Biology University of Rome Tor Vergata Italy

Computational Biology Unit Department of Informatics University of Bergen Norway

Department of Biomedical Sciences University of Padua Italy

Department of Computing William Penney Laboratory Imperial College London UK

Department of Dermatology University of Lübeck Germany Institute for Biostatistics and Informatics in Medicine and Ageing Research Rostock University Medical Center Germany

Department of Informatics Bioinformatics I12 TUM Germany

Department of Physical Chemistry RCPTM Faculty of Science Palacky University Czech Republic

Department of Plant Systems Biology VIB Belgium Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics Ghent University Belgium

Department of Veterinary Clinical and Animal Sciences Faculty for Health and Medical Sciences University of Copenhagen Denmark

Dept of Biology University of Rome Tor Vergata Italy

Dept of Computer Science Systems and Communication Univ Milano Bicocca Italy

Dept of Physics Sapienza University Italy

Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester UK

Faculty of Medicine The Chinese University of Hong Kong China Hong Kong Bioinformatics Centre School of Life Sciences The Chinese University of Hong Kong China

Faculty of Technology and Center for Biotechnology Universität Bielefeld Germany

INRA UMR Institut de Génétique Environnement et Protection des Plantes France INRIA IRISA GenOuest Core Facility France

Institut Français de Bioinformatique CNRS UMS3601 France

Institute of Biomembranes and Bioenergetics National Research Council and Dept of Biosciences University of Milano Italy

Institute of Computer Science University of Tartu Estonia

Instruct WTCHG UK

IRCCS AOU San Martino IST Italy

Loschmidt Laboratories Department of Experimental Biology and Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment RECETOX Masaryk University Czech Republic

National Bioinformatics Institute Unit Fundacion Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncologicas Spain

NEBC Wallingford Centre for Ecology and Hydrology UK

Protein Research Group Department for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Southern Denmark Denmark

Radboud University Medical Centre CMBI Netherlands

School of Computer Science University of Manchester UK

SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Switzerland

SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Switzerland Department of Ecology and Evolution Biophore Evolutionary Bioinformatics group University of Lausanne Switzerland

STFC Daresbury Laboratory UK

The European Bioinformatics Institute UK

UniProt European Bioinformatics Institute UK

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