The São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp) created a database, Covid-19 Data Sharing/BR, with the aim of quickly making information available for research related to the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The repository is an initiative that has its origins linked to Network of Scientific Data Repositories of the State of São Paulo, developed by teaching and research institutions in the state, including Unicamp.
The launch of Data Sharing/BR took place on June 17th, but has a three-stage schedule. Since that date, when a small set of data was made available, the scientific community has been able to download the data and perform analyses. Until June 24th, comments and suggestions can be sent to email covid19datasharing@fapesp.br. Assessments will be considered by the repository organization for possible improvements to the platform's data and documentation. From July 1st, the complete initial set of data will be published.
Repository data is automatically made available at: https://metabuscador.uspdigital.usp.br/.
For the Pro-Rector of Research at Unicamp, Professor Munir Skaff, sharing data is extremely relevant for the rapid advancement of research. “The knowledge generated, if it is made available to other groups, brings enormous benefits to everyone, as there is a cooperative effect. In addition to your data, you also have access to other people's data and this strengthens the construction of better science, which is all we need in a time of crisis like the one we are experiencing now,” he notes.
Unicamp has its own data repository, called Unicamp Data Repository (Redu). Professor at the Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computing (IMECC) Benilton de Sá Carvalho, one of those responsible for formulating Redu, remembers that all this data is found through metasearch, which is the same one used by the Fapesp repository. Thus, if a researcher searches for data relating to the new coronavirus in the Covid-19 Data Sharing/BR database, data from institutions that are part of this network, such as Unicamp, will be found, since the metasearch engine connects to all institutions that are part of this network. O Scientific Data Repository of the State of São Paulo.
For him, the new repository and data sharing in general increase the transparency of the way they are collected, also giving them greater visibility. Furthermore, they enhance research gains. “You increase the visibility of the research being organized and you can speed up research using this information. A potential collaborator can look at that data set from another perspective. Other researchers can analyze that data set by asking questions that the initial researcher hadn’t even thought of,” he says.
Driving data sharing
Data sharing, in the state of São Paulo, began to be developed especially from 2017. Fapesp had already made a request for universities to encourage this practice and Unicamp, in addition to having created its own repository, participated in the committee that formulated the metasearch engine, now used by Covid-19 Data Sharing/BR. Although the effort is recent, Benilton believes that it has already started in a very mature way.
