Data access: Toward unrestricted use of public genomic data

Abstract

Despite some notable progress in data sharing policies and practices, restrictions are still often placed on the open and unconditional use of various genomic data after they have received official approval for release to the public domain or to public databases. These restrictions, which often conflict with the terms and conditions of the funding bodies who supported the release of those data for the benefit of the scientific community and society, are perpetuated by the lack of clear guiding rules for data usage. Existing guidelines for data released to the public domain recognize, but fail to resolve tensions between, both the importance of free and unconditional usage of these data, as well as the “right” of the data producers to the first publication. This self-contradiction has resulted in a loophole that allows different interpretation and a continuous debate between data producers and data users on the utilization of public data. We argue that the publicly available data should be treated as open data, a shared resource with unrestricted usage for analysis, interpretation, and publication.