Dear all,
I am currently engaged in a metagenomic research project and intend to incorporate several publicly available metagenomes into my analysis alongside my own data. These publicly accessible metagenomes have been previously published. I would like to inquire whether it is necessary to seek permission from the original authors before including these metagenomes in my manuscript. Can it cause any ethical issue? Of course I will cite the paper and provide all essential information on utilized metagenomes.
Your guidance on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Hello!
The point of publicly available data is to make it free for reuse by other researchers. So all you need is to cite the data by corresponding accession numbers. Citing the papers is also a good addition to it.
As Timur says, they are available for everybody, normally a table with Accession numbers and publication is presented (as supplementary) on those studies than uses previously published data.
Enjoy data analysis!!!
There are few exceptions where the submitter of data request to contact them or an authorship for any kind of further use of their data. Therefore, it is better to check whether there is such statement.
Thank you for your response, @Sizhong Yung. I would appreciate it if you could provide further details on the situations that necessitate obtaining the authors' permission. To clarify, I intend to utilize metagenomic data that has been previously reported by other researchers.
Well, I knew a case that a meta study uses a batch of metagenomic data from public database. The paper was initially published and was retracted because a group of one initial dataset insisted on that the authors did not get their agreement for further use. Although a rare case, it is better to pay attention.
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