Text & Design: Bharti Dharapuram
Much of modern research runs on open scientific databases, which are vulnerable to failure due to cyberattacks, budget cuts and geopolitical conflict.
In their recent Nature Genetics commentary, Dr Gaurav Sharma from IITH and coauthors propose alternate models of data governance that are more resilient, collaborative and transparent.
Reference: Sharma, G., Munteanu, V., Ghiasi, N. M., Mahanta, U., Banerjee, J., Varma, S., Foschini, L., Ellrott, K., Mutlu, O., Ciorbă, D., Ophoff, R. A., Bostan, V., Moore, J. H., Sousoni, D., Krishnan, A., Lucaci, A. G., Tull, A., Mason, C. E., Dimian, M., … Mangul, S. (2026). Towards a decentralized future for open-science databases. Nature Genetics, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-026-02606-x