GOVERNMENT & POLICY
SHARING RESEARCH N I H policy requires investigators to include plan for sharing model organisms in grant proposals SUSAN R. MORRISSEY, C&EN WASHINGTON HE IDEA OF SHARING RESOURCES gram staff to resolve any concerns before in biomedical research in a an award is made. Grantees who fail to timely way is nothing new at the comply with an approved sharing plan risk National Institutes of Health. losing future N I H grants for themselves The agency has a long-standing and their institution. policy governing the sharing of NIH-funded research. After all, sharing of biomaterials, reagents, and data reduces research costs by avoiding duplication of effort and facilitating more rapid progress in the bio medical field. To further encourage sharing of research resources, N I H has put in place a policy After Oct. 1, researchers who submit pro that reaffirms the agency's position in this posals "basically have to address the issue of area and gives some additional guidelines how they're going to share whatever model to grant applicants who deal with model organism that would result from their organisms and related resources. Under grants," says Norka Ruiz Bravo, deputy di this policy, which went into effect on Oct. rector for extramural research at N I H . 1, researchers who intend to apply for N I H "There are a number of model plans that re funding to develop new, genetically mod searchers might be able to present, from ified variants of model organisms either something very simple where they have must include in their application or pro nothing at the beginning to something quite posal a specific plan for how they intend to complex that tries to address some ofthe rel make these organisms available to the re evant intellectual property issues," she notes, search community or must state why shar adding that three example plans and other ing is not possible. ι important information = about this policy are availModel organisms cov ° able at http://grants.nih. ered by this policy include £ gov/grants/policy/model both mammalian models, | _organism/index.htm. such as the mouse and rat, 1 N I H originally issued and nonmammalian mod ζ the policy in May, and els, such as buddingyeast, | then worked with the social amoebae, round * people who provided inworms, fruit flies, zebra j; put to address their confish, and frogs. Research v cerns. The results have resources include geneti £ been incorporated into a cally modified or mutant S set of frequently asked organisms, embryos, pro questions (FAQs) avail tocols for genetic and able on the website, ex phenotypic screens, mu PLAYING FAIR plains Joseph J. Ellis, act tagenesis protocols, and Caenorhabditis elegans is an ing director of N I H ' s genetic data. The policy example of a model Office of Policy for Ex applies to all applications organism discussed in NIH's tramural Research Ad and proposals for N I H Policy on Sharing Model ministration. The FAQs grants, cooperative agree Organisms. serve as a "living docu ments, and contracts, rement" for interpreting the policy which is gardless of budget size. unchanged from the one posted in May Although the evaluation of the policy
T
for sharing resources will not generally be included in the evaluation and scoring of the project by peer review, the plan will be reviewed along with the proposal and com mented on in an administrative note. Re searchers will have to work with N I H pro HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
explains that, even though N I H has been very responsive to the concerns that the group has raised since release of the poli cy earlier this year, COGR would like N I H to address a few more issues. One ofthese deals with the renegotiation of material transfer agreements (MTAs) with third-party material providers. N I H does include some guidance for dealing with MTAs; however, "it doesn't address the is sue ofincoming MTAs with terms that may conflict with the N I H sharing policy," Hardy says. "We've been concerned that this might necessitate substantial renego-
"Noncompliance with the sharing policy should be treated the same way as noncompliance with any other NIH funding requirement."
One group that has voiced its concern over the implementation of the policy is the Council on Government Relations (COGR), an association of research uni versities. Robert B. Hardy, director of con tracts and intellectual property at COGR,
tiation of MTAs so that investigators can comply with this new policy," he notes. COGR is also concerned that N I H de cided that the penalty for noncompliance in this case would be the possible denial of future agency funding for both the re searcher and the institution. "Noncom pliance with the sharing policy should be treated the same way as noncompliance with any other N I H funding requirement," Hardy says. In addition, Hardy raises the question of who will pay for the maintenance and distribution of these model organisms and related material. According to Ellis, re searchers can write the cost for these ac tivities into their grant, or if the costs arise after the grant is awarded, they can apply for supplemental funds. "Investigators should take advantage of the available repositories when possible, which would remove a lot of the cost is sues for them in sharing," Ellis says. 'Also, if they can't secure funds from us, they can provide reasonable charges for sharing," he notes. But for Hardy, this lack of assur ance that additional N I H support will be available remains a concern. Hardy also points out that although ex tramural scientists will now be subject to this broad policy, intramural scientists are subject to sharing policies only with regard to mice. However, according to Ellis, the issue is being addressed, and there is apian to draft a complementary policy for intra mural scientists. "We have taken what I hope is a commonsense approach to this policy," Ruiz Bravo says. "\ve've developed a set of FAQs and will update them as new things arise. We are just going to have to learn as we go along." • C&EN
/
OCTOBER
4, 2 0 04
21
