“Hold-Until-Published” data release

In principle we release “Hold-Until-Published” data when one of the following three conditions is met:

The submitter requests to release the data.
The accession number has published and it has been confirmed.
- We do not release the data when its accession number was published wrongly by other than the submitter.
- “publish” means to disclose the accession number(s) to the public through paper (including on-line publication), thesis, academic meeting, internet, press report, etc..
  “publish” also means cited accession numbers in published data including all of following cases: BioProject, BioSample and DRA accession numbers cited by DBLINK line of DDBJ flat file, DDBJ accession numbers cited by /inference qualifier, PRIMARY line and CONTIG line of DDBJ flat file, BioProject and BioSample cited as DRA metadata.
A specified hold-date has come.

In cases 2) and 3), data will be released without permission from the submitter.
Above three principles are applied to the data which were registered at DDBJ after January 1, 1998. For the data submitted before 1998, principles 1) and 2) are applied.

Notes on “Hold-Until-Published” data release

Why is the hold-date required?

One of important policies for DDBJ is that the data submitted to DDBJ should be eventually released and shared.
So, DDBJ will release your data as soon as possible, if you like to do so.
However, in many cases, submitter needs to hold the data in the meantime, mainly until publication of related academic paper.
In that case, specification of hold-dated is required.
The reason why DDBJ asks submitter to specify a hold-date is to avoid that the submitted data is left without publication.
If you wish your data to be held for a while at DDBJ, be sure to specify the exact date (hopefully within one year) on which the sequences should be released to the public.
In the required time, please contact us to release your data or to postpone its hold-date, after seeing Management of data release schedule.

Management of data release schedule

The data submitter has to manage schedule of data release by him/herself, in principle.
As mentioned in principle 1), when the submitter requests to release the data, DDBJ will do so even before the hold-date.
If you like to postpone the hold-date, please let us know accession number and its new hold-date at least two working days before the old hold-date.
Please note in advance that we will release the data which the specified hold-date will come during holidays in order after the start of our work.

If you want to release your data or to postpone the hold-date of your data, please contact us via web form.
See Data Updates/Corrections in detail.

Overview of International Nucleotide Sequence Databases Policies

Refer to INSDC policy.

[FAQ] Why is the retracted data still available?