IC Directors’ Meeting Highlights — January 10, 2013

Announcements

Dr. Collins provided brief updates on a recent IOM Study on US Health within the International Perspective, the Sherley versus Sibelius case, and a recent Committee on Science meeting.  He also noted pending recruitment activities for two new NIH leadership positions: Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity and Associate Director for Data Science.

Genomic Data Sharing Follow-up: Eric Green and Laura Rodriguez

Drs. Green and Rodriguez provided background on the existing genome-wide association studies (GWAS) policy and the need to update the policy to include broader genomic data types in data sharing expectations. A new draft trans-NIH proposal for genomic data sharing includes issues related to consent for research use and timelines for data submissions.  The draft policy will be published for public comment and significant stakeholder engagement before it is published. 

IC Directors discussed the importance of data sharing and the current language in grants that indicates an expectation versus requirement to do so.  Creating a requirement instead of an expectation would need a regulatory change. 

ORCID Executive Director: Laure Haak

Dr. Haak discussed the current challenges in tracking scientists and connecting researchers to their research.  She described ORCID’s mission to provide a registry of persistent unique identifiers for researchers and scholars, and to automate linkages to research objects such as publications, datasets, other IDs, grants, and patents.  As of January 6, 2013, ORCID has 27 member organizations and 47,056 registered users (launched October 2012). 

IC Directors were interested in the connection between ORCID and federal-wide profiles and PubMed.  They discussed the importance of dealing with inappropriate use of the ORCID ID.