The tranSMART Foundation, a nonprofit organization providing a global, open-source knowledge management platform for scientists to share pre-competitive translational research data, has announced that it will manage and further develop the OpenBEL project in an agreement with Selventa.

Biological Expression Language (BEL) is a language, developed by Selventa, for representing top scientific findings in a standard way to foster collaboration and sharing of those findings. OpenBEL is a member-based community focused on accelerating the pace of open source technology innovation and scientific discovery.

The OpenBEL project becomes the second main project for the tranSMART Foundation, adding to and enriching the original tranSMART software platform. Each project will remain independent, but integration between them will enhance both projects.

According to tranSMART CEO Keith Elliston, “In adding OpenBEL to the foundation, we not only begin the expansion of the foundation to advance key initiatives that foster the exchange of knowledge in biomedical research, but also bring these two projects in alignment for the direct advantage of the research community.”

William Hayes, CTO at Selventa, said, “We are delighted to have OpenBEL become part of the successful tranSMART Foundation. We believe the open source and open data community that tranSMART has created is the best environment to expand the adoption and further development of OpenBEL.”

The formal transfer of OpenBEL has been completed. The teams from both Selventa and tranSMART Foundation continue to work through the details. They are planning an OpenBEL launch event in mid-January to discuss the current tools and describe the roadmap going forward for the project.