Root Cause Analysis: Summary and Report

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) made data available for millions of SARS-CoV-2 sequences for the benefit of the larger scientific community through NLM’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) to advance research and public health.

NLM was asked about the withdrawal of data for 242 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the SRA database based on a submitter’s request, which made the data no longer available for public access. Data submitters may request the removal of data from SRA in accordance with established guidelines. NLM initiated an independent review (root cause analysis) to determine if appropriate actions were taken in processing the request.

The independent review found that the data for 242 SARS-CoV-2 sequences submitted to SRA in 2020 were inadvertently assigned the wrong status of ‘withdrawn,’ which removes sequencing data from all public means of access but does not delete them. The sequencing data in question should have been given the status of ‘suppressed,’ which means that sequencing data are removed from the search process but remain available by accession number.

In April 2022, NLM shared information and actions stemming from that independent review and made available the summary and full report from the independent review.

Learn more about how sequence data are submitted, processed, and made publicly available in GenBank and SRA.