Dear Bioc developers, I recently downloaded three publicly available single-cell RNA-seq datasets from the NCBI GEO/SRA repository and created an R package with some gene-level summaries (read counts and FPKMs).
I'm currently using the package locally for my own tests, but I'm thinking that this may be a useful resource for the community and thinking of sharing it on github and eventually submit it to Bioconductor. I was not involved in any way with the original studies, and I'm wondering what is the best practice in terms of license / data sharing. Since there are many experimental data packages in Bioconductor, I'm guessing that I'm not the first person wondering about this. >From the NCBI website, I read (quote from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/about/policies.shtml): Databases of molecular data on the NCBI Web site include such examples as nucleotide sequences (GenBank), protein sequences, macromolecular structures, molecular variation, gene expression, and mapping data. They are designed to provide and encourage access within the scientific community to sources of current and comprehensive information. Therefore, NCBI itself places no restrictions on the use or distribution of the data contained therein. Nor do we accept data when the submitter has requested restrictions on reuse or redistribution. However, some submitters of the original data (or the country of origin of such data) may claim patent, copyright, or other intellectual property rights in all or a portion of the data (that has been submitted). NCBI is not in a position to assess the validity of such claims and since there is no transfer of rights from submitters to NCBI, NCBI has no rights to transfer to a third party. Therefore, NCBI cannot provide comment or unrestricted permission concerning the use, copying, or distribution of the information contained in the molecular databases. Should I contact the original authors for permission? Or is the fact that the data were publicly shared enough to grant me permission to redistribute? In that case, is there a standard license that I should use? Thanks for any feedback / thought! Best, davide [[alternative HTML version deleted]] _______________________________________________ Bioc-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel