BY-COVID D2.2: Data Access and Transfer across research domains and jurisdictions

BY-COVID Work Package (WP) 2 brings together datasets and catalogues of metadata across domains, assesses data governance and access procedures, and contributes to increase the FAIRness level of different data sources. It aims to align metadata descriptions and other semantic information, first within domains (e.g., biomolecular and imaging, clinical and health, survey, etc), and in a second stage (in alignment with WP3 developments) across domains to propose a reference catalogue with harmonised metadata descriptions, which can facilitate data access and eventually enable data mobilisation for the analysis workflows specified by WP4 .

Deliverable 2.2 (D2.2) focuses on data access and transfer across research domains and jurisdictions. Originally intended to address technical, legal, and organisational barriers in data sources, its scope expanded to include all types of data that also link to pathogen variants via SARS-CoV-2 DataHubs (WP1). The objectives of D2.2 are two-fold: ensuring compliance with data privacy principles for controlled access data and proposing strategies to enhance data interoperability. Efforts included developing a survey, conducting ad-hoc meetings with key stakeholders, and aligning with the FAIR data principles. The deliverable contributes to ongoing efforts to facilitate efficient and responsible data sharing, which should enable faster and coordinated responses in future pandemics.