What this registry is, and isn't
A curated reading room for the databases disease research quietly runs on — written and edited by working scientists, not vendors.
What this is
DiseaseDb began as an internal cheat-sheet — the list of databases a working medical scientist actually opens during a week's research. We kept losing it in shared drives, so we made it a website.
It isn't a comprehensive directory of every biomedical database. There are excellent meta-registries for that. This is a curated picture: the resources that quietly do the hard work, with enough context to know which one to reach for and what its limits are.
Entries are written by working scientists, reviewed by domain editors, and updated when a resource changes meaningfully. Suggestions and corrections are welcome — see Contribute.
How we edit
Every entry has a designated section editor — a working scientist in the relevant domain. New entries are drafted from primary documentation and the resource's own published descriptions, then reviewed for accuracy and tone before publication.
We focus on the things you can't easily derive from the resource's homepage: what it's actually useful for, where its limits lie, what it pairs well with, and the canonical reference. Where two resources overlap, we say so. Where one supersedes another, we say that too.
We're trying to write the registry we wish someone had written for us when we started this work.
Editorial principles
- Curated, not exhaustive. If we don't think a resource is worth your time, we leave it out. Meta-registries exist for completeness; this isn't one.
- Sourced from working use. Entries describe how a resource is actually used in practice — diagnostics, study design, target discovery, surveillance — not the marketing version.
- Cross-referenced. Every entry points to the handful of resources you'd most likely open alongside it. The Referenced by rail on each detail page shows the inverse.
- Honest about access. We label each resource free, registration-gated, controlled-access or subscription so you know before you click.
- Updated with cadence. When a resource ships a meaningful release, it shows up on the homepage's Recently updated strip and in the resource's own changelog section.
License & reuse
The DiseaseDb editorial content — descriptions, taglines, use cases and cross-references — is released under CC BY-SA 4.0. You can reuse and adapt it with attribution, provided you relicense under the same terms.
Resource names, logos and trademarks belong to their respective maintainers. Linked external resources are governed by their own terms.
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Issues, corrections or ideas: editors@diseasedb.example or via the Contribute page.