The new Norwegian COVID—19 Data Portal enhances access to critical knowledge

Today ELIXIR Norway has launched the Norwegian COVID-19 Data Portal (https://covid19dataportal.no/). The service facilitates sharing and accessing research data generated in Norway on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). On this occasion, ELIXIR Norway underlines its commitment for Open Science by endorsing the Manifesto for COVID-19 Research by the European Commission.

Monitoring of mutations and the spread of SARS-CoV2 strains is crucial for successful management of the pandemic. Access and sharing of the underlying data is central to this effort, as well as for the advancement of the scientific understanding of the virus, the disease and its treatment.

On a European level, joint efforts by the European Commission, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and ELIXIR have led to the establishment of the COVID-19 Data Portal, a European framework in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), for sharing and accessing data linked with the COVID-19 disease data as openly as possible while preserving patient privacy and in compliance with applicable legislation.

The new portal now launched in Norway is coordinated with its central European counterpart. Its aim is to support researchers in Norway from all domains working on COVID-19 to efficiently find and share both virus and patient data sets nationally and internationally, with controlled access to protect privacy. The new portal provides services and tools to work responsibly with virus and patient research data, in one central location.

We now see how critical FAIR [Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable] and open sharing of research data can be for us as a society. By providing this service to researchers in Norway, we hope we can contribute to a continuous management of this crisis. We invite all other actors providing infrastructure for Life Science in Norway to join these efforts — Inge Jonassen, professor at UiB and head of ELIXIR Norway.

ELIXIR Norway and the data management project BioMedData funded by the Research Council of Norway underline their commitments for Open Science, by endorsing the Manifesto for COVID-19 Research by the European Commission along with more than 500 organisations (including universities, research institutes and private companies) and more than 1500 individuals from all over Europe and the world.

In a crisis like COVID-19 it is crucial to make research data and results accessible to other researchers and users as soon as possible. This will increase our capacity to respond quickly as a society. However, more efficient sharing of research is also of great value to research and innovation in general, and will contribute to improving quality and impact — John-Arne Røttingen, Chief executive officer of the Research Council of Norway.

Norwegian Covid-19 data portal

Manifesto for EU COVID-19 Research

Read more

The Norwegian Research Council and open access to research data

Statement on Data Sharing in Public Health Emergency

Contact persons

Christine Stansberg, Node coordinator ELIXIR Norway Christine.Stansberg@uib.no +47 402 33 184.

Inge Jonassen, Head of Node ELIXIR Norway Inge.Jonassen@uib.no +47 905 24 316.

Nils P Willassen, Head of ELIXIR at the University of Tromsø, which hosts the data portal nils-peder.willassen@uit.no +47 776 44 651.

ELIXIR Norway and BioMedData are funded by the Norwegian Research Council under the grant agreements 270068 and 295932/F50.

The COVID-19 Data Portal Norway services are provided by ELIXIR Norway, BioMedData and the ELIXIR Norway nodes at University of Bergen (Head: Inge Jonassen), University of Tromsø (Head: Nils P Willassen), University of Oslo (Head: Eivind Hovig), Norwegian university of science and technology (Head: Pål Sætrom), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Head: Dag Inge Våge)