ENA policies

The International Nucleotide Sequence Databases (INSD) has been an international collaboration between DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank for over 18 years. Its advisory board, the International Advisory Committee, is made up of members of each of the databases' advisory bodies. At their last meeting, members of this committee unanimously endorsed and reaffirmed the existing data-sharing policy of the three databases that make up the INSD, which is stated below.

Individuals submitting data to the international sequence databases managed collaboratively by DDBJ, EMBL, and GenBank should be aware of the following:

1. The INSD has a uniform policy of free and unrestricted access to all of the data records their databases contain. Scientists worldwide can access these records to plan experiments or publish any analysis or critique. Appropriate credit is given by citing the original submission, following the practices of scientists utilising published scientific literature.
2. The INSD will not attach statements to records that restrict access to the data, limit the use of the information in these records, or prohibit certain types of publications based on these records. Specifically, no use restrictions or licensing requirements will be included in any sequence data records, and no restrictions or licensing fees will be placed on the redistribution or use of the database by any party.
3. All database records submitted to the INSD will remain permanently accessible as part of the scientific record. Corrections of errors and update of the records by authors are welcome and erroneous records may be removed from the next database release, but all will remain permanently accessible by accession number.
4. Submitters are advised that the information displayed on the Web sites maintained by the INSD is fully disclosed to the public. It is the responsibility of the submitters to ascertain that they have the right to submit the data.
5. Beyond limited editorial control and some internal integrity checks (for example, proper use of INSD formats and translation of coding regions specified in CDS entries are verified), the quality and accuracy of the record are the responsibility of the submitting author, not of the database. The databases will work with submitters and users of the database to achieve the best quality resource possible.

The INSD is an outstanding example of success in building an immensely valuable, widely used public resource through voluntary cooperation across the international scientific community. This success has been achieved by following the guidelines and principles outlined above.
 

Publication

Soren Brunak, Antoine Danchin, Masahira Hattori, Haruki Nakamura,
Kazuo Shinozaki, Tara Matise, Daphne Preuss (2002)
Nucleotide Sequence Database Policies
Science 298 (5597): 1333 15 Nov 2002

Advisors

Soren Brunak,*
Center for Biological Sequence Analysis,
Technical University of Denmark,
DK-2800 Lyngby,
Denmark.

Antoine Danchin,*
Genetics of Bacterial Genomes,
Institut Pasteur,
28 rue du Docteur Roux,
75724 Paris Cedex 15,
France.

Masahira Hattori,+
Laboratory of Genome Information,
Kitasato Institute for Life Science,
Kitasato University,
1-15-1, Kitasato,
Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 228-8555
Japan.

Haruki Nakamura,+
Institute for Protein Research,
Osaka University,
3-2 Yamadaoka,
Suita 565-0871, Osaka,
Japan.

Kazuo Shinozaki,+
Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology,
RIKEN, 3-1-1 Koyadai,
Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0074
Japan.

Tara Matise,++
Department of Genetics,
Rutgers University,
604 Allison Road,
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8082,
USA.

Daphne Preuss,++
Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
University of Chicago,
1103 E. 57th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637,
USA.

*EMBL advisors.

+DDBJ advisors.

++GenBank advisors.