Policy

Resource-Sharing Policy

For individual researchers : the Global Water Microbiome Consortium (GWMC) can provide sequencing- and GeoChip-based service for your samples free, or at a low charge of material cost, especially when you have unique samples but currently do not have facilities or enough funding for metagenomics-related experiments. The advantage is that GWMC can use the same protocols and standards to generate reliable, comparable datasets for all samples, and that all datasets are stored at the same site. The generated data will be shared among the sample provider, the GWMC, and other participants within the GWMC. The sample provider may reserve his/her rights to report the results in publications. Meanwhile, the sample provider and other GWMC members can access this dataset, their own datasets, and/or other datasets available in the GWMC’s database to perform more comprehensive and integrated analyses. Also, as the GWMC’s database rapidly expands, a global survey of water microbiomes and a further development of predictive models become possible. Based on the significance of contributions made by individuals, co-authorships may be granted for publications under the GWMC. The providers of water samples and associated metadata sets should have the priority for analyzing their individual datasets in detail and generating publications. Other GWMC members may use their datasets for comprehensive studies integrated with various datasets when the data providers agree. Co-authorships may be arranged between the data providers and the data users under the GWMC.

For academic or non-profit institutions: they can use the GWMC standards and protocols for their water microbiome studies, or send samples to GWMC for the standardized analysis with a reasonable fee charge for materials. Also, they may use the GWMC database and pipeline to store and analyze their data, which will be shared within the GWMC. Additionally, they may perform more integrated analyses with their own datasets and shared datasets with the GWMC.

For companies involved in the development and production of water resources and their associated microbial community analysis products, they can use the GWMC standards and protocols for evaluation and assessment of their products (e.g., water sample collection, DNA extraction, sequencing). In this case, they may also use the GWMC database and pipeline to analyze their data, which will be shared within the GWMC. Also, the GWMC may provide samples to test their products. Similarly, they may provide their new products for the GWMC to test the performance by comparing with other similar products. In this case, to benefit the GWMC, free products or discounted prices may be provided once the GWMC decides to use their products.

The Global Water Microbiome Consortium should be acknowledged or listed as one of affiliations in publications when their major results are generated by the GWMC members.