Genome sharing projects around the world

– Open access is not enough

Fiona NielsenGoettingen, June 8 2016

Slides will be made available online Tweets welcome #ELPUB2016

Open access is not enough

Example: 600,000 open access articles

Example: 600,000 open access articles

Genetic researchers search for data to validate their hypothesis and discover new relations between genetics and disease

We studied this problem in genomics

We interviewed and surveyed genetic researchers

T. A. van Schaik et alThe need to redefine genomic data sharing: a focus on data

accessibility, Applied & Translational Genomics, 2014

10.1016/j.atg.2014.09.013

We studied the problem by qualitative interviews followed by a survey of researchers in

human genetics

We studied the problem by qualitative interviews followed by a survey of researchers in

human genetics

Open Access more frequently accessed

T. A. van Schaik et alThe need to redefine genomic data sharing: a focus on data

accessibility, Applied & Translational Genomics, 2014

10.1016/j.atg.2014.09.013

We studied the problem by qualitative interviews followed by a survey of researchers in

human genetics

But Open Access is not enough

T. A. van Schaik et alThe need to redefine genomic data sharing: a focus on data

accessibility, Applied & Translational Genomics, 2014

10.1016/j.atg.2014.09.013

Researchers spend months to find and access genomic data, and often

choose to not access data at all

• Genetic researchers know only a handful of data sourcesaverage 4, max 10

• At our last Repositive data census we counted a total of 163 data sources

The visibility gap

• Read more in our recent PLoS Biology paper: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002418

10-20x more data is available – and Open Access!

Can download the data straight away or after logging in.

Need to apply for access to the data.

Has both Open and Restricted access data within one repository.

Lots of open access data in genomics

• Make data more visible, discoverable• Increase data reuse• Better use of funding• More impact for biomedical research and drug discovery

faster impact for patients

How can we close the gap?

Without adding to the confusion

Repositive has launched a portal (in beta)

Discover new data sources

• Indexing metadata, ie data descriptions

• Easy search• Simple access• Free platform

• First ~42,000 genomic data sets indexedhttp://repositive.io

Repositive increases data discoverability

Make your data visible

• Users can contribute descriptions to improve visibility for their research

• Researchers want visibility because they want credit

http://repositive.io

• Papers with Open Access data receive more citations • Piwowar HA and Vision TJ (2013) Data reuse and the open data citation advantage. PeerJ, 1: e175.

http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.175

Does discoverability impact data reuse?

• Does discoverable open data increase data reuse?

• We are doing an experiment with GigaScience to test the data access impact of increasingdiscoverability of their Open Access genomics data

Thank you!