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Table 1 Discussion of public data sources in terms of data governance
| Database | Data Accuracy | Data Completeness | Data Integrity | Metadata | Data Availability | Data Authorisation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChemSpider | manual and automated data curation, crowd-sourcing community supported | claimed to be the richest source of structure-based chemistry | an aggregator of nearly 400 different data sources | includes data sources metadata, provenance metadata (e.g. owner and time-stamp of data creation, curation and update) and user meta-data | can be accessed by web GUI and web services via PC and mobile devices; query results can be downloaded as a set | publicly available, no multi-level user access supported |
| CEBS | manual data curation, collaboration between data de-positors and internal curation staffs | contains 132 chemicals and their response in 34 detailed studies | permits users to integrate various data types and studies, a database schema is well designed by the support of controlled vocabularies | includes domain-specific metadata (e.g. owner, study details) and provenance metadata (e.g. time-stamp of the study start, curation updates) | allows users to retrieve and combine customised information and export to various formats for downloading. Able to support up to 100 concurrent users | publicly available, but also provides private data access mode to protect sensitive user data |
| CTD | manual data curation, sup-ported by the scientific com-munity | includes 1.4 million chemical-gene-disease data connections and has been widely recognised | employs community-accepted vocabularies and ontologies to capture data and is integrated with external resources | includes domain-specific, provenance metadata and supporting literature sources are recorded | access to entire database (downloadable as a dump file) and individual data sources; query results can be customised and exported to different formats | publicly available, no multi-level user access provided |
| DSSTox | manual and automated data curation, quality assurance log files recorded; but no curation for external data | contains over 8000 chemicals and have been incorporated into several external sources | integrates molecular structures and toxicity data into standardised DSSTox SDF | includes domain-specific and provenance metadata | data sources and associated documents can be downloaded individually and included data is searchable via many options | publicly available, no user registration is required |
| ToxCast | manual data curation, includes internal and external review | covers various chemical classes and diverse mechanism of action, 320 chemicals have been collected in Phase I and 1000 more is currently being screened | well integrated into many other EPA databases | only domain-specific metadata is included, no recorded track of provenance metadata (e.g. curator and time-stamp) | data sources are available for download individually in the ToxCast website; included data can be browsed and queried via ToxCast DB web GUI | publicly available, no user registration is required |
| ACToR | does not provide any data curation itself, data quality totally depends on the original data sources | contains over 500,000 chemicals and associated toxicity data from nearly 500 sources | itself is a chemical toxicity data aggregator and employs a clear and flexible database schema for data integration | metadata of data source and domain-specific information is well recorded, no recorded track of provenance meta-data | open-source implementation and the entire database can be downloaded | publicly available, no user registration is required |
| OpenTox | allows for automated, man-ual and global data quality validations | contains different categories of public data sources which supporting predictive toxicology | employs ontology to support efficient integration of data coming from different sources into a unifying structure | metadata of data source and domain-specific information is well recorded, no recorded track of provenance meta-data | provides APIs and REST-ful web services for included data, algorithms, models, ontologies and reports | publicly available, but employs OpenSSO for initial implementation of multi-level user access |
