The US National Institutes of Health is updating its data-sharing policy, ScienceInsider reports. It notes that the agency hasn't altered its policy since 2003.
In a draft policy released this month, the agency proposes requiring all NIH-funded researchers to share their data. In particular, the draft policy says that all agency-funded investigators would have to submit a data management and sharing plan that describes how they would manage and share their scientific data and how they would take any sharing restrictions into consideration.
Carrie Wolinetz, associate director for science policy at NIH, tells ScienceInsider that this draft policy is "weightier" than the earlier plan as it applies to all NIH-funded projects, not just the larger ones. ScienceInsider notes that various institutes of NIH, certain projects, and journals have had their own data-sharing policies, but Wolinetz adds that as many researchers still don't share their data, an update to NIH policy is in order.
The draft policy, though, gives no deadline for how quickly data must be shared, and Wolinetz tells ScienceInsider that that is due to varying norms between disciplines.
The draft policy is open for comments through January 10, 2020.