Excerpted from the California Digital Library's Data Pub blog. This post co-authored by Dr. Michael Weiner, CIND director at UCSF.
The DataShare project is a collaboration between University of California San Francisco’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), the UCSF Library, and the UC Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library. The goal of the DataShare project is to achieve widespread voluntary sharing of scientific data at the time of publication. This will be achieved by creating a data sharing website which could be used by all UCSF investigators, and ultimately by others in the UC system and other institutions. Currently data sharing is mostly done by large, well funded multi-investigator projects. There would be great benefit if much more raw data were widely shared, especially data from individual investigators.
This project is the brainchild of Michael Weiner M.D., the director for the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases. Weiner’s experience as the Principal Investigator of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) led him to conclude that widespread data sharing can be achieved now, with great scientific and economic benefits. All ADNI raw data is immediately shared (at UCLA/LONI/ADNI) with all scientists in the world without embargo. The project is very successful: more than 300 publications and many more submitted. This success demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of sharing data.
Read more about the DataShare project's individual and institutional initiatives.