[Susanna-Assunta Sansone]

Dear RDA COVID-19 WG and RDA/Force11 FAIRsharing WG members,
Today’s press release on the COVID-19 Rapid Review Initiative may be of
interest to you.
The publishers, members of this initiative, have agreed to mandate _data
deposition_ for COVID-19 articles, rather than data being made available
on request.
Kind regards,
Susanna, on behalf of the C19RR Initiative
******
London 20 Jan 2021
Data deposition required for all C19 Rapid Review publishers
The C19 Rapid Review Initiative
–
a large-scale collaboration of organisations across the scholarly
publishing industry – has agreed to mandate data deposition across the
original group of journals that set up the collaboration (eLife, F1000
Research, Hindawi, PeerJ, PLOS, Royal Society, FAIRsharing, Outbreak
Science Rapid PREreview, GigaScience, Life Science Alliance, Ubiquity
Press, UCL, MIT Press, Cambridge University Press, BMC, RoRi and
AfricArXiv). New members aim to align in due course.
The Initiative, which grew from a need to improve efficiency of peer
review and publishing of crucial COVID-19 research, began in April 2020
and now involves over 20 publishers, industry experts, and scholarly
communication organizations, supporting over 1,800 rapid reviewers
across relevant fields.
The group also welcomes new members: Oxford University Press, and Gates
Open Research. All publishers agree to work together to maximise the
efficiency of peer review, ensuring key work related to COVID-19 is
published as quickly and openly as possible.
From 20th January 2021 articles published by the original group of
COVID Rapid Review Initiative members must have data shared in a public
repository rather than just available on request. The new common policy
is to meet the TOP Data Transparency Level II
that requires that “Data
must be posted to a trusted repository. Exceptions must be identified at
article submission”. This means mandating data sharing in a public
repository rather than just ensuring the authors publish a Data
Availability Statement (DAS). Any DAS must now explicitly list the
repositories where the data are publicly available (subject to ethical
considerations).
Data available on request will not be acceptable, except for legal or
ethical reasons (publishers have specific policies regarding exceptions,
and how they may be able to be managed in other ways). The Initiative
also strongly encourages that data and software are formally cited in
the article, following the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles
andthe recent Software Citation
Guide .
For transparency and visibility, COVID Rapid Review Initiative members
will register their data policy in FAIRsharing
, which interlinks repositories to standards
for identifying and reporting data and metadata; these data policies
will be grouped and visible under a dedicated FAIRsharing Collection
. The use of repositories and
community standards are at the core of FAIR
, the globally adopted Principles
advocating datasets and other research outputs are findable, accessible,
interoperable and reusable.
Sarah Greaves, Independent STM Publishing Consultant, who was among the
co-founders and coordinates the group says: “The ethos of this group is
openness and transparency in publishing anything that could help against
the current pandemic. We know that data available on request is often
not truly available so wanted to make sure all related data for COVID-19
papers from journals involved in this initiative is immediately visible
without hurdles. This was the next step in our Statement of Intent last
year and we are delighted all members of the group are now able to
mandate this requirement.”
Professor Susanna-Assunta Sansone, FAIR co-author and FAIRsharing
founder, based at the University of Oxford, says: “Making data available
is not enough, sharing it via the appropriate repositories -that also
implement the relevant data and metadata standards- is essential. This
will ensure data is discoverable, and available in a transparent,
trustworthy and persistent manner to support peer-review and withstand
reproducibility”.
Phil Hurst, Publisher at the Royal Society says: “The open sharing of
data is essential to allow the scientific community to scrutinise the
validity of research findings – this is even more important in times of
crisis”.
**** END ****
Press release on OASPA
site:https://oaspa.org/data-deposition-required-for-all-c19-rapid-review-publ…
Blog post on OASPA site:
https://oaspa.org/guest-post-update-covid-19-rapid-reviewers-collaboration/
The hub address is:
https://oaspa.org/covid-19-rapid-review-collaboration-initiative/
—
Prof. Susanna-Assunta Sansone, PhD
Associate Director, Oxford e-Research Centre
Associate Professor, Dep of Engineering Science,
University of Oxford, UK
Data Readiness Group:
https://datareadiness.eng.ox.ac.uk
ORCiD: 0000-0001-5306-5690
skype: susanna-a.sansone
twitter: @SusannaASansone
—
While I may be sending this email outside my normal office hours,
I have no expectation to receive a reply outside yours.

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