openid

In previous sections of this primer we introduced several aspects of the identification problem and outlined scenarios where a universal authentication system forms an integral part of the solution (see Figure 1 below). Now it is time to investigate how this may work in practice, which technologies (in addition to OpenID) might play a role, and how a researcher might leverage these tools to aggregate information about himself in a meaningful way.

A number of ostensibly separate initiatives, with diverse objectives, have begun considering the risks, benefits, and practicalities of unambiguously identifying researchers as they use and contribute to biomedical data sources on the Internet. The GEN2PHEN project is one such initiative, given its general aim of helping to unify human and model organism genetic variation databases towards increasingly holistic views into Genotype-To-Phenotype (G2P) data.