Rules and Guidelines

SIMPLER’s database and biobank are open for and accessible to scientists in academia or the business sector. Project requests are handled smoothly in an open process.

Projects must be approved by SIMPLER in order to acquire data or samples. Approval includes confirmation of approved ethical review and verification of funding for the project by responsible PI. In addition, when so is needed, a personal data user agreement must be signed before data/samples are released.

• All project requests must follow the procedure for application.
• A project must have an explicit and well defined hypothesis/research question besides using relevant and motivated analyses. For biological samples, the choice of biomarker must be motivated.
• Each project must have an ethical approval from a valid ethical review board, i.e. the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. If you need a guide for how to fill out your ethical application, you can download this template Pdf, 774 kB. (pdf). The template is only available in Swedish, as the ethical application must be written in Swedish when sending it to the Swedish Ethical Review Authority.
• If the director of SIMPLER were to reject a project request, the applicant can appeal to the Steering Committee of SIMPLER for a second review.
• Project requests with similar hypotheses/research questions will be approved, but the projects will be informed of each other and encouraged to collaborate. Check the Ongoing Projects page if you want to ensure your project is unique. If a project has financed analyses of biological samples, there will be a one year waiting time from the day when the analysis is finished before data is shared with other projects.
• Since the biological samples are a finite resource, and SIMPLER has a responsibility towards participants and funders, requests for samples from the entire sub-cohort or samples with high scientific value that supply the infrastructure with informative, not-previously-analysed biomarkers, are prioritized.
• All processing and storage of data must be done in an application safety classified for sensitive personal data provided by Uppsala University. Users get access to this application when data are handed out in a project specific folder. Data must not be moved from this folder, users are only allowed to download result files from the application.

Delimitation of a research project

Projects are delimited to a maximum of three adjacent and specific research questions and with a duration of up to five years and a scope of up to five publications/manuscripts.

A longer duration or more publications/manuscripts within the same project demands a new application and the user fee to be paid anew. Also, if already requested and received data and/or biological samples are desired to be used in an extension of the project or in another project, an additional application must be completed. The additional application must be approved before analysis can begin.

Delimitation of a student project

The following requirements must be met for a project to be counted as a student project:

• In the application to SIMPLER, the syllabus for the work and the student's register extract or equivalent documentation must be attached in addition to the mandatory information.
• The scope of the work must be such that it can generate a maximum of one scientific publication in addition to the written report that may be required in the course syllabus.

User obligations

• Users must return variables, i.e. biomarkers, obtained at analysis in order to benefit the infrastructure. This is done in collaboration with SIMPLER’s data manager.
• On request from the SIMPLER Office, the responsible PI must give feedback on project progress once a year for SIMPLER’s annual report and report to SIMPLER’s funders.
• The main funder, the Swedish Research Council, may do a scientific evaluation of the infrastructure, and must on request be given access to the complete research material of all SIMPLER projects.