Make Data Sharing Routine to Prepare for Public Health Emergencies

In February 2016, Wellcome Trust organized a pledge among leading scientific organizations and health agencies encouraging researchers to release data relevant to the Zika outbreak as rapidly and widely as possible This initiative echoed a September 2015 World Health Organization (WHO) consultation that assessed data sharing during the recent West Africa Ebola outbreak and called on researchers to make data publicly available during public health emergencies 2. These statements were necessary because the traditional way of communicating research results-publication in peer-reviewed journals, often months or years after data collection-is too slow during an emergency.