SCHARP DataSpace Designing for Open Science
Half of the 78 million people who have been infected with HIV since its identification in the 1980s have died, making it one of the most merciless epidemics in history. Today, more than 1 in 200 people is infected, with two million new infections recorded each year. While medical advances have made HIV easier to manage, researchers agree that an HIV vaccine is the most likely, and perhaps the only way by which the AIDS pandemic can be stopped.
In the face of all this, the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research & Prevention (SCHARP) is on a mission to help HIV and other vaccine researchers around the world collaborate through data. SCHARP partnered with Artefact and LabKey Software to help define the objective, design a solution, and build the DataSpace, a web tool to empower vaccine investigators to explore data across HIV studies, generate new hypotheses, and accelerate the path to discovery.
The promise of open science: An empowered, aware, collaborative community
HIV has many strains, mutates quickly, infects the very cells meant to fight it, and exposes very little of itself to attack. Researchers have conducted hundreds of HIV vaccine studies over the years, each setting out to explore a specific hypothesis about how it works or how we might fight it. Hidden within and across these studies are other important insights that were not part of the analysis plan. They remain undiscovered because the data can be incomplete, inaccessible, and difficult to stitch together. Researchers have to wait years before they can access their colleagues’ results in published research papers. More importantly, the actual data that produced the papers is often unavailable, relegated to a huge data graveyard where potential clues to vaccine stay buried.
In light of this, the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, the group of top HIV experts and funders, called for “a dramatic shift in the culture and practice of sharing research data.” Their top priority? Creating “databases for sharing trial data globally and an insistence on pursuing diverse hypotheses.”
The DataSpace brings researchers information that is easy to access, filter, explore, interpret, and export for further analysis. By using DataSpace, they can identify gaps in current research, review and learn about past work that can help them secure grants, and test new ideas to see if they are worth further exploration.