This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 3 of this Preprint.

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance
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Supplementary Files
- Supplemental File 1. An example blank template in .xlsx format.
- Supplemental File 2. An example blank template in .csv format.
- Supplementary File 3. An example of the template applied to an example dataset (also shown in Table 4), in .csv format.
- Supplemental File 4. Data availability in studies that were included in a recent meta-analysis of coronavirus prevalence in bats.
Authors
Abstract
Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of wildlife infectious disease research and surveillance. Unfortunately, most best practices for publicly sharing these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of wildlife disease data – particularly negative results – are often withheld or, at best, summarized in a descriptive table with limited metadata. Here, we propose a minimum data and metadata reporting standard for wildlife disease studies. Our data standard identifies a set of 40 data fields (9 required) and 24 metadata fields (7 required) sufficient to standardize and document a dataset consisting of records disaggregated to the finest possible spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scale. We illustrate how this standard is applied to an example study, which documented a novel alphacoronavirus found in bats in Belize. Finally, we outline best practices for how data should be formatted for optimal re-use, and how researchers can navigate potential safety concerns around data sharing.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2TW4J
Subjects
Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Virology, Virus Diseases
Keywords
wildlife, One Health, surveillance, data science, open science
Dates
Published: 2024-05-19 13:43
Last Updated: 2025-04-23 11:59
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License
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Conflict of interest statement:
None
Data and Code Availability Statement:
The example dataset and blank templates are available from Github. No code is used in this manuscript.
Language:
English
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