Collaborative data sharing in outbreak situations

Large collaborative projects offer significant rewards and challenges in equal parts. In the pursuit of success collaborators must navigate a myriad of legal, ethical, and communicative hurdles. While the internet is our greatest tool for communication it is also a source of concern, particularly surrounding issues such as data security and maintaining control over correct legal and ethical compliance. For the Milieu Interieur project (hosted by the Institute Pasteur, Paris, and lead by Matthew Albert and Lluis Quintana-Murci) we have adopted Synapse ( https://www.synapse.org/ ) as our collaborative and public facing tool, allowing fine-grained control over user access and data-specific compliance. Synapse is an open source software platform that scientists use to carry out, track, and communicate their research in real time. The platform enables co-location of scientific content (data, code, results) and narrative descriptions (wiki) of that work. The aim of Synapse is to provide an environment for living research projects, i.e. projects whose data lives on to contribute to society beyond original research goals. Synapse has been used heavily in international collaborative projects like the Dream challenges ( http://dreamchallenges.org/ ). We envision that Synapse will prove equally valuable in the very challenging situations of an outbreak, where coordination is key to acting rapidly. Indeed, we have recently launched a Synapse-based platform for sharing Zika related data and other research outputs ( https://www.synapse.org/zikanet , registration required). We encourage researchers working on the Zika outbreak to sign up and take advantage of the capabilities this platform provides.