INSDC

INSDC Status Document

Status name Causes Implications
Public Data are submitted with no request for confidential hold prior to publication or have reached an owner-agreed public release date. Data are fully available.
Private Data owner requires and indicates to INSDC staff that confidentiality is required until a release date or being cited or made available online or in a publication by the submitter, 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 being 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 the INSDC member responsible for the submission with sufficient notice*.
Permanently Suppressed Data are found to be incorrect with no immediate opportunity on the 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 confidential status, either at 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 INSDC, or a submissions brokering 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.

* specific deadlines are available from INSDC partner.