Dear Prospective Collaborators,

The investigators who designed and conduct SardiNIA believe that the data collected should benefit the scientific community as much as possible. For that reason we want to share data with researchers who have a detailed and scientifically sound project. However, because of the increasing number of collaborators using SardiNIA data for collaborative interactions and Consortium analyses, the Project Officer and the Steering Committee for the SardiNIA Study would like to implement a standard process to submit, evaluate, and approve scientific proposals.

The traits that are under study, and the genotyping that has been done, are summarized in publications to date at this WEB site (Publications) To initiate a collaborative effort, a member of the Steering Committee will act as a responsible investigator. [Current members of the Steering Committee are Goncalo Abecasis (analytic approaches) , Paul Costa (personality, emotions, and behavior traits), Edward Lakatta (anthropometric and cardiovascular traits), Manuela Uda (blood tests and related physiological parameters), Luigi Ferrucci (bone density and frailty-related traits), Alan Zonderman (cognition traits), and David Schlessinger (additional traits and general inquiries).] He/she will have an informal interaction with a potential collaborator - initiated either by that member or by the outside investigator. In either case, there is a standard route to activating a formal collaboration, as follows.

First, a proposal, in a standard format of Guidelines for Collaboration ( Collaboration Guidelines), must receive approval from the Steering Committee before analyses can start. The form can be submitted by the outside investigator or by the responsible member of the Steering Committee, to the Project Officer (schlessingerd@mail.nih.gov). The form is set up for the sharing of data in genome-wide association studies, which are the most frequent current collaborations, but can easily be adapted to other types of study (epidemiological studies, heritability analyses, etc.).

Second, each proposal will be considered by the Steering Committee within 4 weeks of the request, with the goal of facilitating collaboration. Consideration by the entire Committee is done to avoid duplication and to try to ensure that the analyses, which require effort by our small, over-tasked statistical genetics group, are feasible. [Some proposals may also request additional genotyping or even laboratory determinations.]

Third, after any modifications and approval, the collaborators (representatives of the outside group(s) and the responsible member of the Steering Committee for SardiNIA) will sign the Guideline agreement and implement the study. The responsible member of the Steering Committee will then be in charge of following the progress of the study.

Sincerely,
David Schlessinger
for SardiNIA