NIH issues a seismic mandate: share data publicly

Nature  February 16, 2022
In January 2023, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will begin requiring most of the 300,000 researchers and 2,500 institutions it funds annually to include a data-management plan in their grant applications — and to eventually make their data publicly available. Under the new policy, which will go into effect on 25 January, all NIH grant applications for projects that collect scientific data must include a ‘data management and sharing’ (DMS) plan that contains details about the software or tools needed to analyse the data, when and where the raw data will be published and any special considerations for accessing or distributing that data. It makes an exception in cases where data sharing would pose a significant legal, ethical, or technical burden. The NIH recommends that this data be shared only in a reputable repository; ultimately, researchers will decide where to upload the information. The mandate, in part, aims to tackle the reproducibility crisis in scientific research. $10 billion to $50 billion is spent on studies that use deficient methods, a cost that is mostly fronted by public funding agencies…read more.