The ELIXIR Toxicology Community Whitepaper

Egon Willighagen https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286

The ELIXIR Toxicology Community whitepaper, released as a preprint in 2021, was revised and accepted last year¹, reflecting the further development of the community, which was formally accepted late 2022. The Toxicology Community is interfacing between ELIXIR and the toxicology field, and that is meant to include the EU NanoSafety Cluster. ELIXIR describes itself as the “European life sciences infrastructure, bringing together scientists from 23 countries and over 250 research institutes”.

The activities of the Toxicology Community are organized in three main goals: 1. Align open solutions from toxicology research with ELIXIR services and resources; 2. Connect toxicology research with ELIXIR Platforms and Communities; and, 3. Develop open community standards. The article elsewhere in the NSC Updates² on making research output FAIR gives a number of examples of synergy between the NSC and ELIXIR. The development of the Bioschemas ChemicalSubstance profile is a direct outcome of the collaboration.

All NSC members are invited to participate in the Toxicology Community activities, such as our face-to-face meetings or the upcoming workshops of their first Implementation Study. These workshops will be on the following topics:

demonstrate and disseminate FAIRification of toxicological research output;
development of guidance for Research Output Management Plans;
develop a roadmap, training, and best practices for making toxicology services ready for EOSC;
optimise and synchronise the toxicology educational resources in an ELIXIR TeSS-based collection; and,
leverage/train the toxicological community on the systems biology resources/tools within ELIXIR to foster (quantitative) adverse outcome pathway design and use of these towards risk assessment.

The easiest step to engage is to connect via the mailing of the Toxicology Community, to which you can subscribe on the website elixir-europe.org/communities/toxicology. And if you already know your national ELIXIR Node, letting them know of your involvement is very much appreciated.