The DataShare project was established with the general goal of helping to advance science in new and exciting ways by enabling widespread sharing of primary research data. The project was initiated in the spring of 2011 by Michael Weiner, MD, professor of medicine, radiology and psychiatry at UCSF, whose widely successful Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) demonstrated the potential value of an environment in which valuable research datasets are made openly available to the scientific community; and made him a staunch advocate of research data-sharing practices. With support from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at UCSF, Weiner set out to enable all investigators to have an easily accessible forum for sharing data generated by their research.
By fall of 2011, the DataShare effort had grown into a partnership between CTSI, the UCSF Library, and California Digital Library – combining expertise in research data management, repository infrastructure, digital asset management, and Open Access. The DataShare team has now launched an Early Access program giving UCSF investigators access to institutional data-sharing infrastructure at DataShare.ucsf.edu . The system allows UCSF investigators to provide controlled access to research datasets of any size/type. UCSF investigators can simply login using their MyAccess credentials and upload the data files along with some descriptive information about the data, which will be indexed by services supporting discovery of data resources. A standardized Data Use Agreement is applied to all datasets, and investigators can request notification when the data is downloaded. The system also provides information to data downloaders making it clear and easy to properly cite datasets and give credit to investigators who provide data resources.
If you are a UCSF investigator with data to share and are interested in participating in the Early Access program, please contact Megan Laurance, Research Informationist at the UCSF Library, [email protected].