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Info Service on Health Issues (Aug25/02) The LISTEN principles for genetic sequence data governance and database engineering A new perspective paper in Nature Genetics has outlined a key set of principles for the fair use of genetic data that acknowledges the sovereign rights of national governments and Indigenous peoples to their genetic resources, including how they are used by the rest of the world. Mechanisms are sorely needed to address the historical patterns of colonial theft of living organisms and scientific knowledge which persist to this day, further exacerbated by advancing technologies in science and computing that now make the exchange of genetic information easier than ever before. In the context of recent decisions on new ABS agreements within the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty, and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s recently established multilateral mechanism for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources, the paper lays out six design consideration principles for equitable governance of genetic sequence databases. Such principles are rooted in ‘the right to science’, including the right to access scientific products that include data, software and publications. The right to science is explicitly recognised in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The six principles, termed the LISTEN principles, are: Licensed: data cannot be accessed without accepting the terms of use; agreements about data use are binding and entered into voluntarily, with standardized but differentiated responsibilities for particular types of users, uses or data. Identified: access to data is conditional on registration and authentication. Supervised: data access is tracked comprehensively, and information on access patterns is made available to third parties as necessary and in accordance with applicable laws. Transparent: platforms share essential information and build trust with users and third parties. Enforced: consequences for violating agreements are specified, enacted and applied equally and can include temporary or permanent loss of access to data. Non-exclusive: data sharing on multiple platforms is neither mutually exclusive nor restricted. As concluded in the paper: “Such principles articulate a framework for genetic sequence database engineering and governance that ensures that benefit-sharing obligations can be easily identified and enforced, protects data producers from biopiracy and maintains alignment with the FAIR principles, including open access to essential data for public health and biodiversity conservation”. With
best wishes, The LISTEN principles for genetic sequence data governance and database engineering Colin J. Carlson, Monica Granados, Alexandra Phelan, Nithin Ramakrishnan & Timothée Poisot, Nat Genet(2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-025-02270-7 Abstract Several international legal agreements include an ‘access and benefit-sharing’ (ABS) mechanism that attaches obligations to the use of genetic sequence data. These agreements are frequently subject to critique on the grounds that ABS is either fundamentally incompatible with the principles of open science, or technically challenging to implement in open scientific databases. Here, we argue that these critiques arise from a misinterpretation of the principles of open science and that both considerations can be addressed by a set of simple principles that link database engineering and governance. We introduce a checklist of six database design considerations, LISTEN: licensed, identified, supervised, transparent, enforced and non-exclusive, which can be readily adopted by both new and existing platforms participating in ABS systems. We also highlight how these principles can act in concert with familiar principles of open science, such as findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data sharing.
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