The scientific community may soon have a clearer picture of what is going on with the H5N1 avian flu virus in Indonesia, the country which most concerns many experts following the worrisome virus. After hoarding for months the genetic blueprints of the viruses isolated from both poultry and people, Indonesian officials have done an about-face and are sharing a large number of both avian and human viral isolates....
Last week the country’s health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, announced that Indonesia wanted the genetic sequences of all the viruses isolated from human cases in Indonesia to be put into open access databases where any scientist could study them....
The Geelong lab has been working to sequence the avian viruses and should have some initial results any day now, [Peter] Roeder said. [Roeder is an animal health officer with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.] That information will be placed in the public domain, he added. "As soon as the sequence data become available to the government of Indonesia we have an agreement with them that they’ll make it available to the international community."
Sequence data for viruses isolated from about 40 human cases has in recent days been placed in public access databases. When the World Health Organization learned Indonesia was willing to share the data, it asked the two laboratories that had sequenced the viruses for Indonesia to put the information into the public domain. Up until then the data had been stored in a password-protected database accessible only to scientists working for the WHO or for laboratories that do this type of work for the organization. The two labs quickly complied with the WHO request....
Dr. Ilaria Capua, an Italian veterinary virologist who has spearheaded a campaign to put sequence data for all H5N1 viruses in the public domain, said Indonesia’s move may be part of a trend to greater openness. "There is a growing consensus on this data sharing," Capua, who runs an avian influenza reference laboratory for the International Organization for Animal Health, said from Rome. "I would applaud Indonesia and then invite all the other health ministers (of affected countries) to follow that example. And then the veterinary isolates will come."...
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/11/2006 08:46:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
