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Best Practices: Stakeholder-Specific
This section outlines stakeholder-specific best practices for enhancing transparency of data sharing practices. Additional accountability elements found in the GA4GH Consent Policy and Privacy and Security Policy are listed in Appendix 2. It does not represent an exhaustive list of stakeholders or practices.

1. Data Stewards
   
   • Design consent and access processes that remove unnecessary use restrictions on data.
   • Provide clear information about how data can be accessed and how requests are reviewed.
   • Justify any use restrictions or refusals to provide access.
   • Adopt standard or (preferably) common access processes between data sources where appropriate.
   • Permanently link data with metadata about provenance and associated obligations and restrictions in a standard and machine-readable format.
   • Maintain an auditable record of all data users and purposes for which access is provided, and where feasible make it available to data donors and the general public.
   • Where feasible, delegate access decisions to an independent, external party.
   • Clearly set out the consequences of a failure to respect access conditions.
2. Data Users
   
   • Take reasonable steps to become familiar with use conditions, to establish whether an intended use is appropriate (e.g., by contacting the author or data steward), and to demonstrate that use conditions are respected.
   • Identify and appropriately cite the sources of the data analysed.
3. Funders
   
   • Recognize the importance of developing data resources in ranking proposals for funding.
   • Provide adequate funding to support data sharing, as well as the effective monitoring, investigation, and enforcement of data sharing protocols.
   • Gather information on the costs and effectiveness of compliance mechanisms to inform governance practices.
4. Journals
   
   • Establish processes and timelines for making supporting datasets available that are integrated with article submission and ensure stable links between the publication and the dataset or a persistent and citable record of the dataset.
   • Include a section in manuscripts or persistent links to information on how supporting datasets can be accessed, that describes and justifies any access restrictions.
   • Take reasonable steps to require authors to demonstrate that secondary research is consistent with access conditions, and to appropriately acknowledge data sources.
5. Academic Institutions
   
   • Educate trainees, current investigators, and ethics bodies (where applicable) on responsible data sharing practices through class work, mentorship, and professional development.
   • Track data sharing contributions and give them due consideration when deciding hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions (where applicable).
   • Provide infrastructure that facilitates the sending, receipt, and storage of data, including professional and technical capacity, and support for delivering data to repositories.
   • Provide adequate resources for monitoring systems to encourage tracking of compliance, and establish clear processes for handling non-compliance by employees.
6. Ethics Review Bodies
   
   • Members should be educated about the significance of and conditions for data sharing.
   • Encourage researchers to plan to make their data available and to communicate this plan to data donors.
   • Monitor respect of data sharing plans, and request a report demonstrating that protocols have been carried out.
7. Research Consortia
   
   • Negotiate and reach clarity about roles and data sharing responsibilities before research begins.