International Workshop on Rapid Release of Pre-Publication Data to be held May 12 - 13, 2009 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Toronto, Canada

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spg Hbr NY

Investigators

Abstract

In the last 10 years, the field of genomics has made tremendous progress, changing the way that basic research is conducted, attracting a new generation of scientists to the field and contributing a wealth of new information and knowledge with potential medical and agricultural applications. In order to have the broadest impact, the large-scale, genome-wide data sets generated must be released and made available to the research community in a timely way. A two-day workshop entitled "The International Workshop on Rapid Release of Pre-publication Data", organized by Genome Canada in partnership with the National Institutes of Health-National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH-NHGRI), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the UK Wellcome Trust, will be held May 12 - 13, 2009 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Toronto (Canada). This workshop will bring together 150 research scientists, generators of large-scale data sets from human, plant and microbiome sources, database curators, funders and journal editors from around the world to review the history, successes and challenges of rapid, prepublication data release, to revisit the definition of a "community resource project" and to discuss how to ensure that data of different types produced by community resource projects continue to be made available rapidly and in a manner that makes them maximally useful for scientific research. Funds from the NSF will support 10 US scientists to participate in this workshop. It is anticipated that the outcomes of the workshop will be developed into a set of international guidelines for pre-publication release for the major types of large-scale, genome-wide data sets being produced from international human, microbiome, and plant community resource projects. A perspective paper to publicize the workshop recommendations and guidelines will be submitted for publication.