Life sciences—or biodata—resources are essential infrastructure for public and private research, used by scientists worldwide. Research funding organisations spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year supporting biodata resources, both directly and indirectly. These resources are growing exponentially, as they are crucial to most current and future biomedical and life sciences research and are required to store the data generated by the open access policies adopted by most funders. This infrastructure has developed piecemeal over recent decades without coordination between funders or data resource managers and as a result the infrastructure is fragmented, duplicative, fragile, and lacks a strategy for long-term sustainability.

The GBC has been formed to address these challenges, on behalf of and in collaboration with research funders, to ensure that biodata resources remain freely available to all researchers everywhere around the globe, to address the fragility and potential loss of resources that would damage both public and private research, and to share approaches for the further expansion of biodata resources.