New national portal makes research data on COVID-19 accessible

Advances in research into the coronavirus are largely driven by research data being rapidly shared around the world. The EU Commission is therefore making research data and metadata from research into COVID-19 accessible on a joint open data platform within the framework for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The initiative is a collaboration between the EU Commission and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), where Sweden is a member.

A new Swedish COVID-19 data portal is now being launched, to be coordinated with the European portal. It is aimed at researchers in all subject areas, but is also open to the general public. The portal is operated by SciLifeLab, and the Swedish Research Council is responsible for coordination with the European initiative.

– The Swedish Research Council is happy to contribute to making this reality, says Sofie Björling, head of the Department of Research Infrastructures at the Swedish Research Council. Within the framework of our Government mandate to coordinate the national work of implementing open access to research data, we are very committed to the European work with EOSC. This is the first concrete example of how the EOSC is intended to work, that is to say to make data that fulfils the FAIR principles accessible.

In the portal, researchers can find various types of data on COVID-19 and share their own data, both nationally and internationally. There are also services and tools that can be useful in the work with research data – such as systems for joint workspaces, data publication, communication systems and guidelines for data management.

– The development of the corona pandemic shows with utter clarity the importance of open and transparent research. By sharing data with researchers across the world, we are increasing the pace of research, enabling studies with greater scope, and making it possible for anyone to partake of the research that is being conducted, to scrutinise methods and try to reproduce results, says Johan Rung, head of SciLifeLab’s data centre.