The main task of most EMBnet nodes is to provide their national scientific community with access to bioinformatics databanks, specialised software and sufficient computing resources and expertise.

EMBnet has a tried-and-tested infrastructure to organise training courses, give technical help and help its members effectively interact and respond to the rapidly changing needs of biological research in a way no single institute is able to do.

EMBER was a European Union (EU) funded project aiming to develop a suite of multimedia bioinformatics educational tools [4] .

Established in 2010 as the successor of the EMBnet.news (with volume numbering continuing uninterrupted), EMBnet.journal is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal publishing original research and technical papers in bioinformatics.

[8][9] The journal contains two main sections, one for research articles, reviews, and technical notes, and one for non-peer-reviewed commentary, reportage, user-guides, training information, and news.