While modern genomics research often adheres to community norms emphasizing open data sharing, many genomics institutes and projects have recently nuanced such norms with a corpus of data release policies. In particular, publication moratoria and data retention policies have been enacted to ‘reward’ data producers and ensure data quality control. Given the novelty of these policies, this article seeks to identify and analyse the main features of data retention and publication moratoria policies of major genomics institutes and projects around the world. We find that as more collaborative genomics projects are created, and further genomic research discoveries are announced, the need for more sophisticated yet practical and effective policies will increase. Reward systems should be implemented that recognize contributions from data producers and acknowledge the need to remain dedicated to the goals of open data sharing. To this end, in addition to the current choices of employing data retention or publication moratoria policies, alternative models that would be easier to implement or less demanding on open science should also be considered.