Microattribution and nanopublication as means to incentivize the placement of human genome variation data into the public domain

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The advances in bioinformatics required to annotate human genomic variants and to place them in public data repositories have not kept pace with their discovery. Moreover, a law of diminishing returns has begun to operate both in terms of data publication and submission. Although the continued deposition of such data in the public domain is essential to maximize both their scientific and clinical utility, rewards for data sharing are few, representing a serious practical impediment to data submission. To date, two main strategies have been adopted as a means to encourage the submission of human genomic variant data: (1) database journal linkups involving the affiliation of a scientific journal with a publicly available database and (2) microattribution, involving the unambiguous linkage of data to their contributors via a unique identifier. The latter could in principle lead to the establishment of a microcitation-tracking system that acknowledges individual endeavor and achievement. Both approaches could incentivize potential data contributors, thereby encouraging them to share their data with the scientific community. Here, we summarize and critically evaluate approaches that have been proposed to address current deficiencies in data attribution and discuss ways in which they could become more widely adopted as novel scientific publication modalities.

RD-Connect: An Integrated Platform Connecting Databases, Registries, Biobanks and Clinical Bioinformatics for Rare Disease Research

“…Within the first year, this partnership has borne fruit: the first data sets have already been transferred, and time lines for release of the remainder have been approved. Additional ways of meeting the data-sharing challenge include initiatives such as microattributions 10,11 and nanopublications 12 to stimulate and reward data-sharing and knowledge-sharing and integration, with an explicit focus on interoperability, as opposed to massive centralization. Although it is the intention of RD-Connect to act as a central repository for IRDiRC research data, it will also be able to integrate with existing databases operating in the same field, such as the DECIPHER database of genomic variation data based at the UK Sanger Institute.…”

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“…A variety of provenance models and provenance-publishing frameworks have recently emerged, including the Open Provenance Model (OPM) [10], the Proof Markup Language (PML) [11], the PrIME methodology [12], the Provenir ontology [13], OvoPub [14], MicroPub [15] and finally the Nanopublication model [16], [17], which will be the focus of this paper. Some provenance models have been successfully applied to build new models and/or systems that can be used to solve specific problems in bioinformatics.…”

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“…Formal peer review and community consensus will integrate branches back into the master DigitalCrust branch. Borrowing from the genomics community, which allows microcitation to unambiguously reference discrete data on organisms (Patrinos et al 2012), the DigitalCrust will provide a capacity for citing and referencing data and data products.…”