The Wellcome Trust has announced a new data management and sharing policy, emphasising the need for researchers to make data available as widely and rapidly as possible.

Many types of biomedical research generate large quantities of data, from high-throughput genetic studies to population-based epidemiological investigations. These data are potentially of value to the wider research community – for example, allowing pooling of data, facilitating similar studies or enabling different types of data analysis to be carried out.

Under the new policy, researchers will be expected to manage their data and, where appropriate, to make research data available with as few restrictions as possible. In addition, researchers likely to generate large volumes of data will need to include a data management plan as part of the grant application process.