Public services from the European Bioinformatics Institute.

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) provides numerous free-of-charge, publicly available bioinformatics services that can be divided into the following categories: ftp downloads; data submissions processing and biological database production; access to query; analysis and retrieval systems and tools; user support; training and education and industry support through EBI's SME program. These services are all available at the website. It is imperative that EBI's data as well as the tools to analyse it efficiently are made available in a free and unambiguous way to the scientific community. An important part of the EBI's mission is to make this happen in a fast, reliable and efficient manner. This paper serves as a brief introduction to each of these services.