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Researchers studying avian influenza say they have agreed to share data that were previously being kept behind closed doors — a move they hope will speed insights into the virus that threatens to spark a human pandemic.

Some countries and organizations have come under fire for hoarding genetic information about the virus. The data have been kept under wraps partly because of concerns that other groups might use them and publish scientific findings without giving due credit to researchers involved.

Now many leading avian influenza scientists have tentatively agreed to share data as part of an effort called the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID). A letter outlining the agreement is published online today in Nature, signed by 70 scientists and health officials, including six Nobel laureates....

[I]n essence, the participants have agreed to place genetic sequences into secure sections (which have not yet been set up) of existing online databases, as soon as possible after producing and analysing them. The group proposes using the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration [INSDC], a network of three major public databases, for the collection.

The data will, at first, only be accessible to scientists who have signed up to the agreement, but will become open to the public after 6 months at the most. Scientists who sign up make a promise to share their sequences. They must also agree to collaborate with, and appropriately credit, all other researchers in publications and intellectual-property agreements....

Veterinary virologist Ilaria Capua at the Vialle dell'Universita in Padova, Italy, started something of a backlash against this system in March this year. Instead of placing her flu sequence data in the WHO-linked, password-protected database, she chose to enter it into the publicly available GenBank, and called on colleagues to do the same. "When you're facing a pandemic, you have to get your priorities straight," she says....

Bogner's and Capua's efforts have resulted in this GISAID agreement, which they put together with Nancy Cox, head of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and David Lipman, director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Maryland....

Capua says that she is "really happy with the result". Perhaps, she says, the same framework could be used to distribute data for other emerging infectious diseases in which information must be shared quickly. "If a new SARS knocks on our door, we have a system in place," she says.

More news coverage of GISAID.

Update. Also see the August 24 public letter from Peter Bogner, Ilaria Capua, Nancy J. Cox, David J. Lipman and others, A global initiative on sharing avian flu data, calling on scientists worldwide to share avian flu data and participate in the GISAID initiative. Excerpt:

Several countries and international agencies have recently taken steps to improve sharing of influenza data, following the initiative of leading veterinary virologists in the field of avian influenza. The current level of collection and sharing of data is inadequate, however, given the magnitude of the threat. We propose to expand and complement existing efforts with the creation of a global consortium — the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID) — that would foster international sharing of avian influenza isolates and data....

GISAID's policies for rapid and complete data release are modelled on those established for community resource projects. These policies have successfully been employed previously, for example by the International HapMap Project (http://www.hapmap.org) — a project to map, and make freely available, data on DNA sequence variations in the human genome.

This letter is also posted at the GISAID site along with the full list of signatories. Also see the press release accompanying the letter.