discoverability

Genomic Data
Guest post

Genomic Data Sharing – Ethical and Scientific Imperative

This is a guest blog post writen by Mahsa Shabani (@Mahsashabani). Genomic data sharing has become an ethical and scientific imperative in the recent years. Funding organizations, research institutes and journals among others, endorsed the significance of data sharing practices to the progress of research and an optimal use of community resources. Consequently, researchers all around the world are extensively involved in the data sharing process, ranging from data production to data use. As sharing practices do involve individuals’ data, the associated ethical and legal concerns should receive thorough attention in order to respect individuals’ rights and maintain public trust. Sharing data via controlled-access public databases has been seen as an answer to the identified concerns at the moment. Data Access Committees (DACs) constructed locally or in a central fashion control access to these datasets according to defined criteria. Evaluating the qualification/eligibility of data users, ethical and scientific grounds of proposed uses and oversight on downstream data uses are considered as the main responsibilities of DACs. While the structure, membership and procedure of access review vary across DACs, some similarities in approaches and mechanisms are observed. A requirement of preparing a summary of data use and signing a data access agreement […]

Hamza
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Hamza Wahid presented his DNAdigest research project

Nuffield Research Placements (previously Nuffield Science Bursaries) provide over 1,000 students each year with the opportunity to work by the side of professional scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. And this is exactly how our team met Hamza, a Sixth Form student at the Perse School in Cambridge, with an interest in molecular biology and genetics, studying Biology, Chemistry, Double Maths and Philosophy. Over the summer Hamza worked at DNAdigest as a part of the Nuffield Student Research Placement on the Genomic Data Sharing Project where his main task was assisting with the ongoing User Interaction Research. The aim of the project was to investigate how people working with human genetics access, use and store genetic data, how they share it or make it publicly available. During his work with our team, Hamza managed to successfully complete 9 face-to-face interviews with people that work with human genomic data from various different fields as well as help out with the completion of an online survey which was also important for the project. On the 23rd of October, Hamza presented a poster on the Genomic Data Sharing project at the Nuffield Celebration Event Gold CREST Awards, where Nuffield students report how their experience […]

Interviews

Cambridge news: interview with Adrian Alexa

As you may already know, DNAdigest has recently spun-out Repositive (formerly knows as Nucleobase),  the social enterprise to develop Open Source software tools for researchers. Not long ago, Adrian Alexa, our CTO,  gave an interview for Cambridge News explaining more in depth what lays behind the idea of Repositive. Take a look: That bit in Jurassic Park where Dickie Attenborough explains about Dinosaur DNA (“and bingo… Dino DNA!”) – and then the insect rolls down the tree covered in sap – is, sadly, the total extent of many people’s knowledge of genomic data. You won’t be shocked to hear that there’s quite a lot more to it and, as usual, Cambridge is leading the way. Repositive Ltd (a social enterprise and part of the Social Incubator East programme) is a spin-out of the Cambridge-based charity DNAdigest, fronted by founder Fiona Nielsen and her colleague Adrian Alexa who are both former employees of Illumina (the world leaders in genomic research with a UK office in Saffron Walden). Their mission statement is to ‘empower efficient access and the sharing of genomic data’. Adrian explains: The current practice for sharing and accessing genomic data is very poor. Typically, when a clinic sequences an individual, they will […]

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Publishing and Sharing Sensitive Data

Some data are born sensitive, some achieve sensitivity, and some have sensitivity thrust upon them! The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) has just released a Guide to Publishing and Sharing Sensitive Data which includes a decision tree to help researchers decide whether they can publish such data. The guide is drawing the best practice for publication and sharing of sensitive research data in the Australian context. It provides genuine, step-by-step advice about what you need to know and do before publishing and sharing your sensitive data, including confidentialising your human and sensitive data, how to legally do that, what to include in a consent form requesting data publication and sharing etc. By following this Guide, and the steps within, you will be able to make clear, lawful, and ethical decisions about sharing your data safely. In most cases it can be done! By definition sensitive data are ‘data that can be used to identify an individual, species, object, process, or location that introduces a risk of discrimination, harm, or unwanted attention’. For example, sensitive human data most commonly refers to sensitive personal information. That is when the information shared can be used to identify a person or group of people. Personal […]

Data Discoverability in Public Health
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Data Discoverability in Public Health

Making datasets ‘discoverable’ is one of the most crucial boundaries that need to be overcome when talking about effective data sharing. New research on Enhancing Discoverability of Public Health and Epidemiology Research data was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust on behalf of the Public Health Research Data Forum. This Forum gets together major international funders that aim to increase the availability of health research data in ethical, efficient and equitable manner, while the research explores how research funders can ease the identification, access and usage of public health and epidemiological data for researchers and therefore accelerate the progress in public health. The research was undertaken by a team led by Dr Tito Castillo along with the support of a few universities, associations and companies. They have conducted a survey, in-depth interviews and analysis of the existing models for enhancing discoverability of data, key findings appeared. The three possible models were proposed: i) a centralised portal model, ii) a data journal model and iii) a linked data model. It is thought that when combined those would highly improve and accelerate the availability of health research data in an ethical and efficient ways. Nonetheless, the centralised portal model was preferred by the research community and proposed […]

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