Large consortia projects often face many criticisms [ 19, 20].
Although the literature has emerged concerning the ethical and legal considerations surrounding data sharing, there is relatively little guidance for scientists on steps that could be undertaken to facilitate data sharing in consortia projects that need to negotiate this landscape.
With the rise of novel omics technologies and through large-scale consortia projects, biological systems are being further investigated at an unprecedented scale generating heterogeneous and often large data sets.
We believe that the insights and experiences that we have described in this paper should be helpful to other research consortia undertaking projects that generate enormous datasets and that must transfer those data expeditiously from field sites (including some very rural sites) in multiple developing countries to a central data coordinating center.
The Minerva Consortia Project is a Pentagon-funded incentive for universities to promote research on certain areas of interest to the military.
This is because the consortia project was ongoing at the time of interviewing and respondents' impressions of it were likely to still be in the process of formation.
The instruments of coordination were essentially a formalisation of attempts by donors to coordinate activities within the sector amongst themselves: geographical zoning, sub-sector specialisation, donor consortia, project co-financing, sector aid, harmonisation of procedures, ear-marked budgetary support, donor agency reform and inter-agency intelligence gathering [ 3, 9].
Before his engagement at ZALF, he worked for three years for an Austrian consulting company, where he conducted studies and evaluations for the European Commission and gained experience in project management for international project consortia.
While collaboration for data sharing is increasingly embraced by policymakers and the international biomedical community, we lack a common ethical and legal framework to connect regulators, funders, consortia, and research projects so as to facilitate genomic and clinical data linkage, global science collaboration, and responsible research conduct.
By providing a fine-grained access control system, and an easy mechanism to make data public at a later date, SEEK therefore supports collaborative work in consortia or distributed projects as well as acting as a repository for disseminating published work.
Seven out of 20 project consortia (03K, DEEP, EPOC, TAIN, CloSed, GAPP and NEO-CIRC) include a patient association, while 9 out of 20 project consortia (NEuroSIS, EPOC, DEEP, NeoMero, PERS, LENA, GAPP, NeoVanc, CloSed) include a not-for-profit research organisation, as member or coordinator.
