Session Abstract

As academic institutions increasingly promote collaboration in the furtherance of research, the need for secure collaborative tools that simplify and foster academic partnerships is becoming extremely important. University administrators are charged with protecting the intellectual property of the institution and ensuring the integrity of the research data. Without the availability of secure data management and collaboration tools, investigators will utilize a variety of techniques, some of which do nothing to further the mission of the institution and can lead to loss of research data.

Certain funding agencies, including the NIH and NSF, are now requiring that the data and supporting materials gathered under the course of work under these grants be openly shared with other researchers. While there are existing standard venues (e.g. Genbank for gene sequences) for some types of data, there are no standard or accepted methods or technologies to effect compliance with these mandates. We will explore this area including issues with apparent conflict with protecting research information.