Interview with Frédérique Lisacek: Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland, recorded at the BEILSTEIN OPEN SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM (22 – 24 May 2017). Frédérique Lisacek is talking with Carsten Kettner about challenges for scientific databases. In Switzerland, at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics there are two groups responsible for setting up databases in bioinformatics; one in Geneva looking traditionally at protein data, for example SwissProt, and one in Lausanne looking into DNA data. The main challenge in hosting and maintaining data collections is infrastructure, both in terms of hardware and information curation, i.e. carried out by experts in the corresponding field. Financing curation is a big challenge as it does not traditionally fit in either research or infrastructure. Frédérique tells how important standards are. They need to be developed between people who have the scientific knowledge and people who have the technical knowledge. The coexistence of several standards for the same thing is probably an advantage as no one standard will be able to capture all aspects; however, we should narrow the number down