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PomBase User Survey 2025

This survey is designed to help us demonstrate the value of PomBase to the research community, understand which of the PomBase features are the most useful to our users, and find out how we could further improve the website.
We are interested in receiving feedback from all of our users, whether you are a fission yeast researcher or not, and at any stage of your career.
This survey is entirely anonymous and every question is optional.
1.What is your position?
2.How valuable is PomBase for ...?
Essential
Very valuable
Somewhat valuable
Not very valuable
N/A
Planning small-scale experiments
Planning high-throughput experiments
Interpreting experimental results
Large-scale data analysis
Building models
Preparing manuscripts for publication (e.g. finding references)
Writing grants
Training new lab members
Teaching
3.How valuable is each of these PomBase features for your work?
Essential
Very valuable
Somewhat valuable
Not very valuable
N/A
Gene pages (e.g. cdc15)
Ontology term pages (e.g. GO:1990023)
Publication pages (e.g. PMID:39094570)
JBrowse (genome browser)
Quick Little Tool (QuiLT documentation)
Human disease associations data (see the disease ontology slim)
4.How useful are the different types of data displayed on gene pages?
Very useful
Somewhat useful
Not very useful
N/A
GO functional annotations
Phenotypes
Protein domains and features
Expression data
Genetic and physical interactions
Disease association
Homology and conservation
5.At the start of the year, we have publicly released GO-CAM pathways on PomBase. We have since added several new pathways, and new tools making use of GO-CAM.
How useful is each of these GO-CAM-related features for your work?
Very useful
Somewhat useful
Not very useful
N/A
GO-CAM pathway viewer on gene and process pages
List of all missing activities
Integration with Advanced search functionalities
6.The summary section at the top of the gene pages contains an embedded viewer that can display various widgets. Not all genes have all viewers available. See cdc15 (image below) for an example with all 5 viewers.

How useful are each of these viewers?
Very useful
Somewhat useful
Not very useful
N/A
7.Which of these viewers do you use the most?
8.Can you think of any improvements that would make the PomBase interface clearer or more practical?
9.Are there data, information, or functionalities, that you find difficult to locate in PomBase?
10.If you have integrated PomBase data with your own tools or pipelines, do you have any suggestion to make the data easier to access or use?
11.Is there a genome browser dataset that you would like to see added to JBrowse? Please specify the source publication (DOI or PubMed ID)
12.Is there a new feature or functionality that you would like to see in PomBase (new data type, tool or display, new advanced search option, etc.)?
13.Have you curated any of your papers in Canto (the PomBase community curation tool)?
14.If you answered "Yes" to Question 13, do you agree or disagree with each of these statements?
Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
Canto is easy to use
Canto has sufficient documentation and help
I could annotate all of the types of data I wanted to (breadth)
I could make annotations as specific as I wanted to (depth)
I have learned about the annotation process by curating my papers
Curating my papers helps make my work more visible
15.If you answered "No" to Question 13, why not? (select all that apply)
16.Many funding calls now prioritise AI-driven projects. We plan to use advanced rule-based AI to extract genes, alleles, phenotypes, and GO annotations directly from manuscripts. After validating its accuracy, we’ll use it to pre-populate Canto sessions for author review, reducing manual data input.
Would you be willing to review AI-generated annotations for your papers?
17.Is S. pombe your primary organism of research?
18.Which organisms does your lab work on? (select all that apply)
19.Overall, please think about what PomBase makes possible within the entire body of work you do, and consider what would be different without PomBase.
No effect
Modest effect, e.g. delays but no substantive change in what could be done
Significant effect - e.g. projects would require additional personnel or other resources
Severe effect - some projects would not be feasible
Extreme effect - all projects hindered; far less work would be possible
Over the past few years, how would your work have been affected if PomBase had not existed (2012-present)?
Similarly, how would your future work fare without PomBase?
20.Have you previously used your contribution to community curation as part of data dissemination and management plans?
21.What kind of institution do you work at?
22.What is your geographical location?
23.Is there anything else you would like to tell us that was not covered in the previous questions?