Why ALSF Views Resource Sharing as Important

October 30, 2019

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Centuries ago, Sir Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the sholders [sic] of giants [1].” He acknowledges the importance of sharing: he sees further than his scientific predecessors because he is able to build upon their shared work to make new discoveries. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) staunchly believes that stronger scientific sharing practices will accelerate the pace of discovery and finding cures for children with cancer. Robust sharing improves reproducibility, minimizes redundant studies and maximizes our return on research investment. It is in this vein that ALSF, in 2018, started requiring grant applicants to provide a resource sharing plan as part of their proposal. The sharing plans are evaluated as part of the review process by our Scientific Review Board. These reviewers are asked to consider the manner in which resources will be shared and the extent to which that plan will increase or decrease the impact of the proposed project. Reviewers will also evaluate the applicant’s track record of sharing useful outputs to consider the likelihood that sharing will be successfully executed.

The ALSF sharing plan should describe the unique resources the applicant intends to generate under the grant award and how they will share them. Resources include all outputs developed, including but not limited to: model organisms, cell lines, plasmids, protocols, software, and data. Furthermore, we expect that sharing will be timely and unbiased, and outputs shared will be of the highest quality possible. We expect that there will be as few restrictions as possible when sharing outputs, given ethical and legal constraints. Best practices for sharing include using known repositories and using persistent identifiers to help make resources discoverable.

Less Grunt Work. More Research!

Repositories are ideal because they optimally support sharing practices through the provision of a persistent ID for resource discoverability and tracking; validation of resources; saving provider time by handling logistics such as shipping, storage, and material transfer agreements (MTAs); preserving/archiving the resource; and providing versioning for software and protocols. For example, ALSF funds the Childhood Cancer Repository that stores and distributes validated cancer cell lines and Patient-Derived Xenograft (PDX) models. From 2014-2017, the repository shared 890 cell lines and PDXs to 195 laboratories in 9 countries.

Benefits of Sharing

Researchers have found that manuscripts with resources deposited in repositories garner more citations indicating greater visibility and value of that work. Papers with preprints are more cited [2], papers with data in openly available repositories are more cited [3], and papers with plasmids deposited at Addgene are more cited [4]. There are myriad other benefits to sharing including increased productivity for researchers because sharing well means less time tracking down resources within your lab and from the literature. Papers have been retracted due to loss of the data or records underlying that work which further emphasizes why it’s important to have a sharing plan and to implement it in real time so that resources don’t go missing [5,6] When scientists share well, they produce larger common-pool resources, which is a particular boon due to the rarity of childhood cancers. Sharing can also lead to new collaborations.

ALSF recently issued a targeted RFA to build a single-cell pediatric cancer atlas, where we require the sharing of raw data files within one month of profiling with the ALSF Childhood Cancer Data Lab (CCDL). The reason behind this requirement is so reusable summary data, in this case genes-by-cell counts matrices, will be released rapidly. The CCDL will consider the technologies used across each project and, to the extent possible, process data in a way supports cross-study analyses. Creating this funding mechanism, which takes into consideration the value of resources, allows us to fund important hypothesis-generating research that we expect will have an immediate impact on the field. We tip our hat to those who share well and look forward to our part in moving scientific practice to a place where sharing is second nature. We are more committed than ever to curing childhood cancer, and we know that we will get there faster through enhanced sharing practices.

References

(1)        HSP Digital Library: Item: Isaac Newton letter to Robert Hooke, 1675 [9792] https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792 (accessed Oct 23, 2019).

(2)        Fraser, N.; Momeni, F.; Mayr, P.; Peters, I. The Effect of BioRxiv Preprints on Citations and Altmetrics. bioRxiv 2019, 673665. https://doi.org/10.1101/673665.

(3)        Piwowar, H. A.; Vision, T. J. Data Reuse and the Open Data Citation Advantage. PeerJ 2013, 1, e175. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.175.

(4)        Zyontz, S.; Thompson, N. Addgene Depositors Get More Citations https://blog.addgene.org/addgene-depositors-get-more-citations (accessed Oct 22, 2019).

(5)        Retraction Notice. Commun. Res. 2017, 44 (1), 144–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650217690274.

(6)        Palus, A. S. “We are living in hell:” Authors retract 2nd paper due to missing raw data https://retractionwatch.com/2016/02/23/we-are-living-in-hell-authors-retract-2nd-paper-due-to-missing-raw-data/ (accessed Oct 23, 2019).

Centuries ago, Sir Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the sholders [sic] of giants [1].” He acknowledges the importance of sharing: he sees further than his scientific predecessors because he is able to build upon their shared work to make new discoveries. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) staunchly believes that stronger scientific sharing practices will accelerate the pace of discovery and finding cures for children with cancer. Robust sharing improves reproducibility, minimizes redundant studies and maximizes our return on research investment. It is in this vein that ALSF, in 2018, started requiring grant applicants to provide a resource sharing plan as part of their proposal. The sharing plans are evaluated as part of the review process by our Scientific Review Board. These reviewers are asked to consider the manner in which resources will be shared and the extent to which that plan will increase or decrease the impact of the proposed project. Reviewers will also evaluate the applicant’s track record of sharing useful outputs to consider the likelihood that sharing will be successfully executed.

The ALSF sharing plan should describe the unique resources the applicant intends to generate under the grant award and how they will share them. Resources include all outputs developed, including but not limited to: model organisms, cell lines, plasmids, protocols, software, and data. Furthermore, we expect that sharing will be timely and unbiased, and outputs shared will be of the highest quality possible. We expect that there will be as few restrictions as possible when sharing outputs, given ethical and legal constraints. Best practices for sharing include using known repositories and using persistent identifiers to help make resources discoverable.

Less Grunt Work. More Research!

Repositories are ideal because they optimally support sharing practices through the provision of a persistent ID for resource discoverability and tracking; validation of resources; saving provider time by handling logistics such as shipping, storage, and material transfer agreements (MTAs); preserving/archiving the resource; and providing versioning for software and protocols. For example, ALSF funds the Childhood Cancer Repository that stores and distributes validated cancer cell lines and Patient-Derived Xenograft (PDX) models. From 2014-2017, the repository shared 890 cell lines and PDXs to 195 laboratories in 9 countries.

Benefits of Sharing

Researchers have found that manuscripts with resources deposited in repositories garner more citations indicating greater visibility and value of that work. Papers with preprints are more cited [2], papers with data in openly available repositories are more cited [3], and papers with plasmids deposited at Addgene are more cited [4]. There are myriad other benefits to sharing including increased productivity for researchers because sharing well means less time tracking down resources within your lab and from the literature. Papers have been retracted due to loss of the data or records underlying that work which further emphasizes why it’s important to have a sharing plan and to implement it in real time so that resources don’t go missing [5,6] When scientists share well, they produce larger common-pool resources, which is a particular boon due to the rarity of childhood cancers. Sharing can also lead to new collaborations.

ALSF recently issued a targeted RFA to build a single-cell pediatric cancer atlas, where we require the sharing of raw data files within one month of profiling with the ALSF Childhood Cancer Data Lab (CCDL). The reason behind this requirement is so reusable summary data, in this case genes-by-cell counts matrices, will be released rapidly. The CCDL will consider the technologies used across each project and, to the extent possible, process data in a way supports cross-study analyses. Creating this funding mechanism, which takes into consideration the value of resources, allows us to fund important hypothesis-generating research that we expect will have an immediate impact on the field. We tip our hat to those who share well and look forward to our part in moving scientific practice to a place where sharing is second nature. We are more committed than ever to curing childhood cancer, and we know that we will get there faster through enhanced sharing practices.

References

(1)        HSP Digital Library: Item: Isaac Newton letter to Robert Hooke, 1675 [9792] https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792 (accessed Oct 23, 2019).

(2)        Fraser, N.; Momeni, F.; Mayr, P.; Peters, I. The Effect of BioRxiv Preprints on Citations and Altmetrics. bioRxiv 2019, 673665. https://doi.org/10.1101/673665.

(3)        Piwowar, H. A.; Vision, T. J. Data Reuse and the Open Data Citation Advantage. PeerJ 2013, 1, e175. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.175.

(4)        Zyontz, S.; Thompson, N. Addgene Depositors Get More Citations https://blog.addgene.org/addgene-depositors-get-more-citations (accessed Oct 22, 2019).

(5)        Retraction Notice. Commun. Res. 2017, 44 (1), 144–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650217690274.

(6)        Palus, A. S. “We are living in hell:” Authors retract 2nd paper due to missing raw data https://retractionwatch.com/2016/02/23/we-are-living-in-hell-authors-retract-2nd-paper-due-to-missing-raw-data/ (accessed Oct 23, 2019).

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