Building Global Genomics Initiatives and Enabling Data Sharing: Insights from Multiple Case Studies

Abstract

This genomics global governance research study presents the dynamics and the evolving nature of salient challenges that global genomics initiatives encounter in designing new models for data management, exchange, and collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and countries. Using a multiple case study approach, we assessed and compared organizational responses across diverse genomics initiatives. The richness of a comparative qualitative analysis clearly shows the complexity addressed by genomics initiatives and, importantly, expands current studies by moving beyond an open versus property regime dichotomy. Although we identify some common themes, fundamental differences emerge in the way genomics initiatives set goals, manage heterogeneity, define resources, devise governance, and enable data sharing. Such differences demonstrate the ongoing processes of adapting governance structures, management processes, and organizational design solutions that are implemented in response to different social, technical, and policy environments. We find that genomics initiatives largely benefit from and are shaped by the engagement with large communities of scientists to rethink and design shared rules and guidelines for data exchange and use. Our study provides direct guidance to future global genomics initiatives, but it also offers a benchmark for research in the omics field broadly, both in terms of design and methodological approaches to understand the emerging forms of scientific governance and innovation ecosystems.

Administrative Informatics

“…In academia, data represent a "labor of love" which implicitly confers rights to researchers to decide with whom, where, and how to share them. Studies consistently show that researchers are reluctant to change their data practices towards more open and community-oriented approaches (Fusi et al, 2018). Reasons vary, from concerns of being scooped or exposed for mistakes, to practical matters, such as forgetting the dataset's location, missing or malfunctioning coding scripts, and lack of time and resources (Devriendt et al, 2021).…”

Modernising breeding for orphan crops: tools, methodologies, and beyond

“…While digitalising breeding reduces the technical challenges to data sharing, institutional memory and collaboration, it does not remove the institutional, social, or behavioural barriers that prevent change (Eisenberg 2006). Among other factors, competition around discovery and publication, conflicting interests, capacity gaps, lack of common standards, and widespread norms all still discourage scientific collaboration and the open sharing of resources (Campbell and Bendavid 2003;Shibayama et al 2012;Fusi et al 2018). Modernising breeding for orphan crops may be less about technology than about creating a responsive and enabling environment to fuel people's eagerness to explore and implement best breeding practices for effective delivery.…”

Crop Diversity Management System Commons: Revisiting the Role of Genebanks in the Network of Crop Diversity Actors

“…The advances have rapidly highlighted the existing limitations in current institutions to effectively store and handle data of this size and complexity. In response, funding agencies, the private sector, and other research consortia have begun to establish genomics centers which act as data repositories, but also provide technical services and in some cases operate as hubs of collaborative research [20].…”