Consensus statement on open access and best practices in Indo-Pacific genetic biodiversity research
Addressing competing hypotheses regarding the generation and maintenance of biodiversity in the Indo-Pacific marine realm will necessitate syntheses of genetic data obtained by many different research groups. To advance this goal, we advocate that data from published studies be made openly available.
We encourage best-practices in collecting and data management, including:
- Local involvement and sustained collaboration with local scientists
- Collection of voucher specimens, including photo-vouchers, and one whole individual per population (when feasible) followed by deposition of vouchers in museum collections
- Upon publication, open access material that explicitly links individual genotype (sequence and/or multilocus genotype), georeferenced location of collection, and affiliated voucher specimens
- Long-term maintenance of tissues and DNA’s; if not sustainable in individual labs then depositing them with museums of other public repositories (such as ocean genome legacy)
We draw on the following community standard vocabularies:
