Access to Constances

What are the steps involved?

• Please read the information contained in the Constances Charter, which governs access to the infrastructure. It outlines the rights and responsibilities of research teams whose projects have been accepted.

  Contact the Constances PIs, Prof. Marie Zins and Antoine Duclos, by filling out the synopsis form. At this stage, please provide some information about your project: research team, objectives, main types of data required, and whether the project has industrial funding. After an initial discussion, she will, if appropriate, put you in touch with the Constances team to submit your application.

If they confirm that it is possible to submit an access request, the steps will be as follows:

• Your access request must be submitted through our dedicated application. It must include the following (templates to be filled out will be sent to you by email):

1. A protocol specifying, among other things, the scientific objectives, the methodology, the expected results, the data requested (and the rationale for their use), and, where applicable, details regarding the planned collection of additional data.

2. A description of the research team responsible for the project and the sources of funding for both the project’s implementation and the costs associated with accessing Constances.

3. A statement by the project’s principal investigator confirming acceptance of the operating rules described in the Constances Charter.

• Your request for access will then be evaluated by the Constances International Scientific Committee, leading to the formalization of a favorable (with or without reservations) or unfavorable opinion. The Constances Steering Committee, informed of projects that have received a favorable opinion, may oppose the use of certain data due to conflicts of interest. Finally, the INSERM Ethics Committee may be called upon to verify compliance with medical research regulations. Access requests are evaluated as they are submitted.
• If your request for access is accepted, and before the data is made available, your organization must:
  • In close collaboration with the Constances team, take the appropriate legal and regulatory steps with regard to the use of personal data and, if necessary, with regard to ethics.
  • Contract with INSERM, the Constances data controller. A Data Transfer Agreement (DTA) and if applicable a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) have to be established.
  • If you need to access data from the national administrative health database (SNDS) or any other sensitive data, you will need to take the necessary steps to open a secure CASD (Secure Data Access Center) workspace. The rates applied can be consulted on the CASD website.
• The results obtained from Constances data must be made public, in the form of scientific publications, reports, theses or dissertations, etc. These scientific productions must involve the Constances team. Wherever possible, publications should be open access.
• Upon completion of your project, you must notify the Constances team, which may request, as appropriate, a record of the destruction of the transmitted data and/or the closure of the CASD secure environment dedicated to the project (any subsequent use of the data provided is prohibited).