TY - JOUR

T1 - Collection, verification, sharing and dissemination of data

T2 - the CONTRAST experience

AU - Saarnak, Christopher

AU - Utzinger, Jürg

AU - Kristensen, Thomas K.

PY - 2013

Y1 - 2013

N2 - The scientific community is charged with growing demands regarding the management of project data and outputs and the dissemination of key results to various stakeholders. We discuss experiences and lessons from CONTRAST, a multidisciplinary alliance that had been funded by the European Commission over a 4-year period, in order to optimize schistosomiasis control and transmission surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa. From the start, project partners from Europe and Africa set out an ambitious goal: to sample data following standard protocols at all field sites and then sharing the data in a way that would enable all project partners to have access through a password protected Internet-based data portal. This required anonymous agreement on several common standardised sample forms, ranging from the mundane but important issue of using the same units of measurement to more complexchallenges, for instance agreeing on the same protocols for double-treatment of praziquantel in different settings. With the experiences gained by the CONTRAST project, this paper discusses issues of data management and sharing in research projects in the light of the current donor demand, and offers advice and specific suggestions for similar interdisciplinary research projects.

AB - The scientific community is charged with growing demands regarding the management of project data and outputs and the dissemination of key results to various stakeholders. We discuss experiences and lessons from CONTRAST, a multidisciplinary alliance that had been funded by the European Commission over a 4-year period, in order to optimize schistosomiasis control and transmission surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa. From the start, project partners from Europe and Africa set out an ambitious goal: to sample data following standard protocols at all field sites and then sharing the data in a way that would enable all project partners to have access through a password protected Internet-based data portal. This required anonymous agreement on several common standardised sample forms, ranging from the mundane but important issue of using the same units of measurement to more complexchallenges, for instance agreeing on the same protocols for double-treatment of praziquantel in different settings. With the experiences gained by the CONTRAST project, this paper discusses issues of data management and sharing in research projects in the light of the current donor demand, and offers advice and specific suggestions for similar interdisciplinary research projects.

KW - Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

KW - Data sampling

KW - Africa

KW - Data sharing

KW - Database management

KW - Data curation

KW - Schistosomiasis

KW - Standard protocols

U2 - 10.1016/j.actatropica.2013.05.008

DO - 10.1016/j.actatropica.2013.05.008

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 23707729

VL - 128

SP - 407

EP - 411

JO - Acta Tropica

JF - Acta Tropica

SN - 0001-706X

IS - 2

ER -