New framework set to guide data reuse of public microbiome data

An international study surveying microbiome scientists found that when it comes to data reuse, a universal set of ethical guidelines driven by the scientific community needs to be adapted.

Laura Hug, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Microbiology, was part of a team that surveyed over 300 scientists across the globe to gain their insights on data reuse. The researchers discovered outdated guidelines and an inconsistent approach to reusing data across institutions.

The article, “A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data,” published in Nature Microbiology, proposes easy-to-follow guidelines that promote equitable sequence data reuse. For microbiome scientists who rely on shared data, adaptation of these guidelines could remove a major roadblock, saving hours otherwise spent tracking down dataset owners.

“Too often I’d find datasets that were valuable, but it would take me days to figure out who owned them,” says Hug. “The idea is to integrate these standards into databases with a flag on the data, to ensure there’s a clear connection back to the data owners.”

The flag is a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag for public sequence data, linked to at least one Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). This machine-readable tag signals to the researcher that the data owners prefer to be contacted before reuse and provides their information.

Implementation of these guidelines has already begun, with the European Nucleotide Archive implementing an ORCID metadata category that allows data creators to attach identifying information to their submissions.

Collaboration in science is increasingly important, and shared data sets from across the world help move research forward. But Hug stresses the need for caution when using data when you don’t have the full picture.

“These guidelines are answering a need in the community,” says Hug. “There’s a fair amount of fear that if datasets are shared, it could be misused in ways that don’t accurately support conclusions drawn from others’ research.”

The roadmap will ensure that data submissions are complete and reusable while encouraging researchers to contact dataset owners, which provides valuable context and promotes a collaborative approach to assessing the data’s suitability for reuse. This process also supports appropriate recognition of the original work, which could be listing the dataset owner as an author or acknowledgement within the paper, depending on its impact on the study.