Over the past few months, media coverage of the Zika virus has increased the visibility of data sharing as an important step within the research data lifecycle. To speed the research discovery, the global scientific community has committed “to sharing data and results relevant to the current Zika crisis and future public health emergencies as rapidly and openly as possible.”
However, such willingness to share data is far from the norm. Researcher Rachel Harding, a postdoctoral fellow at the Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Toronto, would like this to change and is making a bold statement by opening her research on Huntington’s disease to the world.
On her Web site, Lab Scribbles, she will be “uploading real-time experimental data in its rawest form. This will not be a polished data presentation which scientists normally present in journal publications or conference presentations but a real-life taster into the everyday workings and reality of being a postdoctoral scientist.” Her hopes are to accelerate the pace of discoveries, create collaborations, and make science accessible and interactive.
Her methods and data will be deposited in real-time to Zenodo, a repository operated by the CERN Data Centre. Visit the HSLS Data Repositories page to locate data repositories for your area of interest.
For more information on Harding’s willingness to share her data, see the press release from University of Toronto.
~ Melissa Ratajeski