Sharing Data from Large-scale
Biological Research Projects:
A System of Tripartite Responsibility
Report of a meeting organized by the Wellcome Trustand held on 14–15 January 2003 at Fort Lauderdale, USA.

Sharing Data from Large-scale Biological Research Projects

Fort Lauderdale, January 2003

Introduction
The Wellcome Trust sponsored a meeting on 14–15 January 2003 to discuss how, at this pointin the development of the field of genomics, pre-publication data release can promote the bestinterests of science and help to maximize the public benefit to be gained from research. About 40
people attended the meeting, among them large-scale sequence producers, sequence users
including computational biologists, representatives of the major nucleotide sequence databases,
journal editors, and scientists interested in other large-scale data sets. The discussion took as agiven that published data are available in their entirety for any use by any investigator, andfocused on issues involved in making data broadly available prior to publication.
The meeting concluded that pre-publication release of sequence data by the International Human
Genome Sequencing Consortium, and other sequence producers, has been of tremendous
benefit to the scientific research community in general. While not all were in a position to makecommitments for their funding agencies, the meeting attendees were in broad agreement that, toencourage the continuation of such benefits, the sequence producers, sequence users and thefunding agencies recognize and implement a system based on ‘tripartite responsibility’.
Specifically,•The meeting attendees enthusiastically reaffirmed the 1996 Bermuda Principles, which
expressly called for rapid release to the public international DNA sequence databases(GenBank, EMBL, and DDBJ) of sequence assemblies of 2kb or greater by large-scalesequencing efforts and recommended that that agreement be extended to apply to all
sequence data, including both the raw traces submitted to the Trace Repositories at
NCBI and Ensembl and whole genome shotgun assemblies.

•The attendees recommended that the principle of rapid pre-publication release should
apply to other types of data from other large-scale production centers specificallyestablished as ‘community resource projects’.

•The attendees recognized that pre-publication data release might conflict with afundamental scientific incentive – publishing the first analysis of one's own data.
The attendees noted that it would not be possible to absolutely guarantee this incentive
without applying restrictions that would undermine the rationale for rapid, unrestricted
release of data from community resources. Nonetheless, it is essential that excellent
scientists continue to be attracted to these projects. To encourage this, the scientificcommunity should understand that pre-publication data release needs active communitywide support if it is to continue to receive widespread support from the producers.
The contributions and interests of the large-scale data producers should be recognized
and respected by the users of the data, and the ability of the production centres toanalyse and publish their own data should be supported by their funding agencies.

Community resource projects
A ‘community resource project’ is a research project specifically devised and implemented tocreate a set of data, reagents or other material whose primary utility will be as a resource forthe broad scientific community. Recent examples of community resource projects include theInternational Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, the Mouse Genome Sequencing
Consortium, the Mammalian Gene Collection, the SNPs Consortium, and the International

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HapMap Project. The products of community resource projects have, over the past several
years, become increasingly important as drivers of progress in biomedical research. The scientificcommunity will best be served if the results of community resource projects are madeimmediately available for free and unrestricted use by the scientific community to engage in thefull range of opportunities for creative science. At the same time, it is crucial that the scientificcommunity recognizes and respects the important contribution made by the scientists who carryout community resource projects.
Tripartite sharing of responsibility
An optimized system for generating community resources involves three constituencies within
the scientific research community – resource producers, resource users, and funding agencies.
Each of the three has a unique and critical role to play in ensuring the growth and developmentof the community resource system.
A. Funding agencies. Funding agencies are the major sources of support of research projects
leading to community resources and projects that depend on the availability of such
resources. Funding agencies have a critical role in determining the quality and breadth ofcommunity resources through the peer review evaluation system and as the sources ofscientific research policies. For these reasons funding agencies should:
1.

designate appropriate efforts as community resource projects, and encourage resource
producers to prepare and submit Project Descriptions (see below) for publication;2.

require, as a condition of funding, free and unrestricted data release from community
resource projects to appropriate central and searchable public databases, and vigorously
ensure that this occurs;

3.

encourage more investigators to serve the community through involvement in suchprojects. In particular, the agencies should ensure that investigators engaged ingeneration of such datasets have sufficient support for curation, maintenance anddistribution of the data to the community, as well as resources to perform initial analyses
using the resources that they have generated;4.

ensure that a centralized view of existing community resource projects is available as an
information source for the community;

5. support central databases that will house and distribute the data in a way that prevents
fragmentation of the data.
B. Resource producers. Community resources are often expensive efforts. For this and otherreasons, they are frequently established and supported as unique facilities. The scientists
who organize and operate community resources are, accordingly, in a uniquely responsible
position. The community is dependent on the success of their efforts and they often facerelatively little direct competition. Resource producers should:
1.

when feasible, publish a Project Description. The purpose of the Project Description,
which will be a new type of scientific publication, is to inform the scientific community
about the resource project and to provide a citation to reference the source of the data.
The Project Description should be written at the beginning of the project and describes

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the plans for and scope of the production and analyses that the data producer intends
to undertake. It will often include a timeline for production goals and data release.
2.

produce data of consistently high quality;

3.

make the data generated by the resource immediately and freely available withoutrestriction;

4. recognize that even if the resource is occasionally used in ways that violate normal
standards of scientific etiquette, this is a necessary risk set against the considerable
benefits of immediate data release.
C. Resource Users. Community resource data sets benefit the users enormously, giving themthe opportunity to analyse the data without the need to generate it first. The data sets are,in general, much larger, richer and of higher quality than individual laboratories could
normally generate. In contributing to what ideally is a symbiotic and synergistic situation,
resource users should:
1.

appropriately cite the source of the data analysed and acknowledge the resource
producers. The early publication of a Project Description, as suggested above, would
provide users with an appropriate reference to cite before the data are formally published;2.

recognize that the resource producers have a legitimate interest in publishing prominent
peer-reviewed reports describing and analyzing the resource that they have produced(and that neither the Project Descriptions nor data deposits in databases are theequivalent of such publications);3.

respect the producer’s legitimate interests as set out, e.g. in a Project Description, while
being free to use the data in any creative way. There should be no restrictions on the useof the data, but the best interests of the community are served when all act responsibly topromote the highest standards of respect for the scientific contribution of others. In somecases, this might best be done by discussion or coordination with the resource producers;

4. assist journals and funding agencies to play their proper roles in ensuring, through thepeer review system, that the system works fairly for all constituents.
Large-scale genome sequencing
Large-scale genome sequencing projects are clearly community resource projects, and serve
as a well-developed example to illustrate the general principles described above. The Bermuda
Principles (http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/hugo/bermuda.htm) were developed in 1996 by thescientists engaged in the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium and their funding
agencies, and have been the basis of a successful system for achieving rapid and open data
release. Now, in 2003, the meeting attendees, recognizing the role of users as well as producers
and funders in effecting a successful system, enthusiastically recommend the reaffirmation of theBermuda Principles for continued large-scale sequencing projects, and recommend that:
1. They should be extended beyond their initial application to sequence assemblies of aminimum size from BAC-based sequence projects so that they apply to rapid (i.e. as soon aspossible) release of both raw and assembled sequence data, subject only to the data meeting
appropriate quality assessment standards.

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2. Funding agencies, users and sequencing centers should all honor their obligations, asdescribed above.
Other community resource projects
In the near future, many other large data sets will be produced as community resources.
While only a few of the meeting attendees were familiar with data types other than large-scalesequences, the attendees recommended that appropriate implementation of the principles
discussed should be devised for other community resource projects, such as large-scale protein
structure determination or gene expression analysis. In many of these cases, the solutions, interms of such considerations as data quality standards, data storage and dissemination modes,
and producer and user interests, are only beginning to emerge. Development of effective systems
for achieving the objectives of the community resource concept should be an integral componentof the planning and development of such new community resources.
Research materials and tools
Some of the issues involved in ensuring rapid and open access to finite resources, such asreagents, clones, cell lines and other material resources, are different from those pertaining toelectronic data sets. The meeting attendees strongly encouraged the relevant funding agencies,
resource producers and users to develop practical approaches to maximizing the benefit of thistype of resource to the scientific community and to research.
Pre-publication release of other data
Beyond community resource projects, many valuable data sets could come from other sources.
Still different issues arise in the case of resources that emerge from research efforts whose
primary goal is not resource generation. In such cases, contribution of the data to the publicdomain as a resource is more a voluntary matter. To obtain the clear benefit that would ensue
from converting such data sets into community resources as rapidly as possible, incentives
should be developed by the scientific community to support the voluntary release of such dataprior to publication, by appropriately recognizing and protecting the interests of scientists whowish to share such pre-publication data with the community.

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The Wellcome Trust is an independent research-funding charity, established under the will ofSir Henry Wellcome in 1936. It is funded from a private endowment, which is managed with longterm stability and growth in mind.
Its mission is to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health.
Its work covers four areas:
Knowledge – improving our understanding of human and animal biology in health and disease,and of the past and present role of medicine in society.
Resources – providing exceptional researchers with the infrastructural and career support theyneed to fulfil their potential.
Translation – ensuring maximum health benefits are gained from biomedical research.
Public engagement – raising awareness of the medical, ethical and social implications ofbiomedical science.

The Wellcome Trust
183 Euston RoadLondon NW1 2BE
Tel: +44 (0)20 7611 8888
Fax: +44 (0)20 7611 8545
E-mail: contact@wellcome.ac.uk
Web: www.wellcome.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust is a charity whose mission is to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human andanimal health (registered charity no. 210183). Its sole Trustee is The Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered inEngland, no. 2711000, whose registered office is 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE.

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