With intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) now recognised as major determinants in cellular regulation, the ELIXIR IDP community white paper presents a roadmap for e-infrastructure developments in the field of IDP research within the ELIXIR framework.

The goal of these developments is to drive the creation of tools and resources to support the characterisation of IDPs. The roadmap is the result of a workshop titled “An intrinsically disordered protein user community proposal for ELIXIR” held at the University of Padua. This workshop, and further consultation with the members of the wider IDP community, identified the key priority areas including the development of standards for data annotation, storage and dissemination; integration of IDP data into the ELIXIR Core Data Resources; and the creation of benchmarking criteria for IDP-related software.

This implementation study will focus on two identified priority areas for the ELIXIR IDP community: the development of formats for standardised data transfer and the creation of a central hub for data dissemination. These advances will simplify access to the output of IDP research and facilitate the integration of IDP data into the ELIXIR Core Data Resources.

These desired outcomes are set to be achieved through the implementation of four work packages:

• WP1 - IDPcentral implementation: consolidate IDP resources through a single portal to improve accessibility for the wider biological community.
• WP2 - Standards and interoperability: concentrates on completing the Minimum Information About Disorder Experiments (MIADE) standard, the HUPO-PSI intrinsic disorder (HUPO-PSI-ID) TAB format and the HUPO-PSI-ID XML interchange format and integrating the controlled vocabularies developed in WP3.
• WP3 - Curation quality control: improve the efficiency and accuracy of curation, and the quality of the IDP ontology (IDPO).
• WP4 - Training and dissemination: communicate the progress and output of the study through participation at the 2021 ELIXIR BioHackathon and organising a strategic workshop focused on IDPcentral, the IDP ontology and MIADE. Training material for the wider biological communities describing the best practices for IDP analyses will be developed and additional training capacity will be built. 

The implementation study is a collaboration between EMBL-EBI, EMBL Heidelberg, ELIXIR Italy, ELIXIR Hungary, ELIXIR Belgium (Wim Vranken), ELIXIR Germany, ELIXIR Czech, ELIXIR Spain, and ELIXIR Switzerland.