Data Availability Policy

While the INSDC databases hold public data, there are several levels of data availability which control access to these data. These are described below.

Status name	Causes	Implications
Public	Data are submitted with no request for private hold prior to publication or have reached an owner-agreed public release date.	Data are fully available.
Private	Data owner requires and indicates that confidentiality is required until a release date or publication in the literature, whichever comes earlier.	Data are not available publicly through any means. A release date is recorded for the data, which are subsequently and automatically released as Public on reaching this date or when cited online or in a publication prior to this date. In the event that a release date must be extended, data owners are required to follow the submission database’s guidelines on how to extend the release of their data. Alternatively, please contact ENA at least ten working days before the currently recorded release date.
Permanently Suppressed	Data are found to be incorrect with no immediate opportunity on the part of part of the owner to be updated. Possible causes include: • incorrect annotation • incorrect source metadata • incorrect sequence • poor quality sequence • incorrect or misidentified source organism • sample mix-up • sequence misassembly • sequence contamination • unallowed submission type • erroneous submission	Data are removed where possible from direct search tools (such as text and sequence similarity search) but remain available by accession number. Permanently Suppressed data is not expected to be re-released.
Temporarily Suppressed	Data owners realize after sequences have been released that they failed to request a private status, either at the the time of submission, or within the period between completion of submission processing and the date on which the submission is normally made available to the public (this time period can vary among the INSDC members).	Data are removed where possible from direct search tools (such as text and sequence similarity search) but remain available by accession number. Data will be re-released when published or after a certain date.
Replaced .	Data owners generate new data under new accession identifiers that directly replace existing data; if possible, updates should be made to the existing accession instead of creating a new record with a new accession.	Data are removed where possible from direct search tools (such as text and sequence similarity search) but remain available by accession number. Where possible, look-up by original accession identifiers leads to a re-direct to new records available under the new accession identifiers. In some cases, the original accession is added to the new record as a secondary accession.
Withdrawn	(1) The submitter has requested a Private status or an extension to an existing release date, but the ENA, or their submissions collaborator, has failed to apply the appropriate release date correctly. (2) Data are found to have been submitted to the databases without the permission of the rightful owner; this is expected to be extremely rare and requires formal institutional contact with the aggrieved institution. (3) Human sequence data that was not consented for unrestricted-access. (4) Serious events such as malfeasance or outright fraud	Data are not directly available publicly from INSDC partners through any means. However, because the data will have been distributed previously as Public, the INSDC partners cannot exercise any control on the resultant use of the data by third parties.