Federica Quaglia | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

APICURON: a reactive infrastructure for credit attribution across distributed research data ecosystems

Data-driven biology relies on structured knowledge generated by expert biocurators, yet this work remains largely unrecognized in traditional academic assessments. To bridge this gap, we present the updated APICURON platform, a credit-attribution infrastructure that formally acknowledges these scientific contributions. Rather than relying on delayed batch reporting, the system captures curation events as they happen and transforms them into verifiable units of work. This design allows independent resources to define and update their own recognition models while preserving the historical record of each contribution. For researchers, APICURON highlights recent activity alongside lifetime achievements and connects verified activities to persistent academic profiles via ORCID. APICURON has been successfully integrated across biological knowledgebases and data resources, demonstrating its application to diverse workflows. Extending beyond biodata resources, it also supports recognition of non-traditional research artefacts, including training materials and research software, without imposing a rigid definition of contribution.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2023

Best practices for the manual curation of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in DisProt

The DisProt database is a significant resource containing manually curated data on experimentally validated intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and regions (IDRs) from the literature. Developed in 2005, its primary goal was to collect structural and functional information into proteins that lack a fixed three-dimensional (3D) structure. Today, DisProt has evolved into a major repository that not only collects experimental data but also contributes significantly to our understanding of the IDPs/IDRs roles in various biological processes, such as autophagy or the life cycle mechanisms in viruses, or their involvement in diseases (such as cancer and neurodevelopmental disorders). DisProt offers detailed information on the structural states of IDPs/IDRs, including state transitions, interactions, and their functions, all provided as curated annotations. One of the central activities of DisProt is the meticulous curation of experimental data from the literature. For this reason, to ensure that every expert and volunteer curator possesses the requisite knowledge for data evaluation, collection, and integration, training courses and curation materials are available. However, biocuration guidelines concur on the importance of developing robust guidelines that not only provide critical information about data consistency but also ensure data acquisition.This guideline aims to provide both biocurators and external users with best practices for manually curating IDPs and IDRs in DisProt. It describes every step of the literature curation process and provides use cases of IDP curation within DisProt. Database URL: https://disprot.org/

q-bio.BM↗