The Immuno-Oncology Translational Network (IOTN) is a Cancer MoonshotSM consortium to accelerate translation of basic discoveries to clinical applications to improve immunotherapy outcomes for both “hot” and “cold” cancers - and to prevent cancers before they occur. The implementation plan of the IOTN is to focus on leveraging the expertise and resources of a collaborative network to develop improved immunotherapy and immunoprevention approaches - including novel combinations.
The IOTN recognizes that collaborative scientific research depends on unhindered information flow and that future research must be able to build on previous discoveries. To this end, the IOTN is committed to making resulting publications and to the extent possible, the underlying primary data immediately and broadly available to the public. The IOTN will conform to the proper balance of open-access, open-source, open-data sharing policies advocated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Office of Data Sharing (ODS), including the National Institute of Health (NIH) Data Sharing Policy, the NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) Policy, and the Cancer Moonshot Public Access and Data Sharing Policy.
Release of Publications
The electronic copies of Publications will be deposited in PubMed Central with proper tagging of metadata to ensure online discoverability and accessibility within four weeks of acceptance by a journal.
Publications will be Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license, or otherwise dedicated to the public domain (e.g., Creative Commons public domain tool, CC0).
Publications will be made publicly available immediately without any embargo period.
The IOTN Data Management and Resource Sharing Center (DMRC) will track the publications from IOTN and post the latest updates into the IOTN Web Portal.
Data Sharing
Underlying Primary Data for the Publications will be made broadly available through an appropriate data repository under the NCI Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC), or (with the approval granted by the IOTN Steering Committee) a similar NIH-designated repository that conforms with the principles articulated in this Policy.
If the research involves human subjects, as defined by 45 C.F.R. 46, the privacy rights of participants and confidentiality of their data will be protected and maintained in accordance with 45 C.F.R. 46 and other applicable laws and regulations.
Underlying Primary Data will be de-identified according to the standards set forth in the HHS Regulations for the Protection of Human Subjects to ensure that the identities of research subjects cannot be readily ascertained with the data.
Underlying Primary Data will also be stripped of identifiers according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule
Underlying Primary Data that are free of identifiers but contain sensitive information are immediately released with no fee for access but are deposited in controlled access repositories of CRDC with similar policies to dbGaP (e.g., the controlled access repository will have an independent data access committee and no financial incentives for limiting access to datasets).
Before submitting Underlying Primary Data, IOTN awardees through their Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), privacy boards, or equivalent bodies, will assess the informed consent materials to determine whether the Underlying Primary Data may be shared as contemplated in this Policy.
The IOTN DMRC will coordinate with the IOTN awardees to deposit the Underlying Primary Data for the Publications into an appropriate data repository under the NCI CRDC. The request of IOTN Data Sharing support is available through the IOTN Support Desk.
