Say, we'd like to publish an experimental paper in which a certain metabolic pathway is investigated from the points of various methods, such as RNA-Seq, mass spectrometry, enzyme assays, gene knock-out, etc. RNA-Seq is used for the analysis of differential expression of genes encoding the enzymes related to the pathway, so only a few tens (out of thousands) of differentially expressed genes are discussed in the paper. Nevertheless, we have to publish the full set of RNA-Seq raw reads since virtually any journal requires sequencing data availability.
There are no problems with uploading our reads to the SRA database and inserting an SRA accession number into the manuscript. But we'd like to analyze the rest of our RNA-Seq data and write one more article to publish elsewhere (without overlapping the aspects discussed in the first paper). Thus, we'll upload the reads in the SRA once, and then refer to the same accession number in two different articles. Is it OK? Is it ethical? Are there any copyright issues to face?
This is certainly ok. This is actually the reason why such high-throuput data are requested to be published. They should be accessible to others (including yourself), asking different questions to that set of data.
One dataset can be used multiple times in research as long it will give new insight or potentially solve the important problem/challenge in a different way. I have used several RNA-Seq datasets which were already published even by different researchers and I have published Q1 ranked research journals based on analysis on those already published RNA-Seq datasets. examples:
i.e.1. Comparative transcriptome analysis of different stages of Plasmodium falciparum to explore vaccine and drug candidates (Article Comparative transcriptome analysis of different stages of Pl...
)2. Preliminary Study to Explore the Immune-Enhancement Mechanism of Platycodon grandiflorus Extract through Comparative Transcriptome Analysis
Article Preliminary Study to Explore the Immune-Enhancement Mechanis...
Adding to the above points, this is a common practice and often adopted by many researchers, however, the problem only arises when publishing the research without providing any data to the public repositories.
- This is done in order to protect the data from others in fear that they could use the data in their studies before the author/owner of the data.
- This practice is not good and should be discouraged. Many journals/editors/reviewers failed to prevent this and let the author publish without providing the data for public access. This is a huge problem in the way of transparent and open/reproducible science.
- It is basically the responsibility of journal to take care of.
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