A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data
Laura A. Hug, Roland Hatzenpichler, Cristina Moraru, André Soares, Folker Meyer, Anke Heyder, Rabab Mahmoud Abdallah, A. Abdalrahem, Nafi’u Abdulkadir, Ibukun M. Adesiyan, L. Alteio, Karthik Anantharaman, R. Anderson, A. H. Andrei, J. Antonio Baeza, Frederik Bak, Brett J. Baker, Alexander Bartholomäus, Nicolás Bejerman, Jennifer F. Biddle, Andrew Bissett, J. Blakeley-Ruiz, K. A. Block, Joachim Boldt, Germán Bonilla‐Rosso, Till L. V. Bornemann, Verena S. Brauer, William J. Brazelton, Andreas Bremges, Elena Buelow, Zachary M. Burcham, Annabel Cansdale, J. Gregory Caporaso, Tomislav Cernava, Ioanna Chatzigiannidou, Rodrigo Costa, Cameron R. Currie, Anne Daebeler, V. De Anda, Ana de Santiago, Luísa Mayumi Arake de Tacca, Justine W. Debelius, Simon M. Dittami, Xu Dong, Mária Džunková, Arwyn Edwards, Robert A. Edwards, Susan Egbert, Julia C. Engelmann, S. P. Esser, Thijs J. G. Ettema, Cassandra L. Ettinger, Aleksandra Petrović Fabijan, Rebecca Ferguson, Patrizia Ferretti, Pierre Foucault, Jed A. Fuhrman, Andreas Gada, Patricia Geesink, Isabel Rodrigues Gerhardt, Mark O. Gessner, Donato Giovannelli, David I. Gittins, Gregory B. Gloor, Raúl A. González‐Pech, Chandana Gopalakrishnappa, Chris Greening, Rachel Gregor, Ann Gregory, Hans‐Peter Grossart, Mathieu Groussin, Bruno V. Guerrero, Mustafa Güzel, Natsuko Hamamura, Trinity L. Hamilton, Jon Hamm, Luke Hart, Christiane Hassenrück, Melanie Hay, Robert M. Hechler, Patrick Hellwig, Michael A. Henson, Michael Herold, Poppy Hesketh-Best, Matthias Hess, Luke S. Hillary, Thomas C. A. Hitch, Sai Suresh Hivarkar, Katharina J. Hoff, Erik Hom, Shengwei Hou, Luisa W. Hugerth, Yeongwoo Hwang, Nicholas E. Ilott, Zackary J. Jay, Sean P. Jungbluth, Elham Karimi, Y. M. Kaspareit, Ciara Keating, Matthew Kellom
Abstract
Science benefits from rapid open data sharing, but current guidelines for data reuse were established two decades ago, when databases were several million times smaller than they are today. These guidelines are largely unfamiliar to the scientific community, and, owing to the rapid increase in biological data generated in the past decade, they are also outdated. As a result, there is a lack of community standards suited to the current landscape and inconsistent implementation of data sharing policies across institutions. Here we discuss current sequence data sharing policies and their benefits and drawbacks, and present a roadmap to establish guidelines for equitable sequence data reuse, developed in consultation with a data consortium of 167 microbiome scientists. We propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag for public sequence data, which will be associated with at least one Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) account. The machine-readable DRI tag indicates that the data creators prefer to be contacted before data reuse, and simultaneously provides data consumers with a mechanism to get in touch with the data creators. The DRI aims to facilitate and foster collaborations, and serve as a guideline that can be expanded to other data types.