Data sharing and opening up research

This month’s research paper examines authorship practices at one of the UK’s leading academic institutions and underlines the importance of collaboration for career progression. ¹ Most researchers know intuitively that collaboration is desirable, but it is helpful to find evidence in support. Some people, however, shy away from collaboration. Research to them is about promoting a product or protecting intellectual property. It might be academic rivalry or a preference to avoid scrutiny. These sentiments are anti-science. Collaboration and opening up data and research for replication and further analysis are essential to get as close as possible to the truth. That’s why this journal supports data sharing.

You will find our updated policy about research data on our website, ² but for the benefit of print readers, I quote the essence of it here:

The Journal requires authors to share their clinical trial research data in a suitable public repository, subject to ethical considerations, and are encouraged to do so for research of all other study designs. A data accessibility statement is required in the manuscript file for all submissions and Authors should follow data citation principles. The Journal also expects authors to share their research data upon reasonable request.

These policies place JRSM among journals leading the fight to make open data standard practice in medical publishing. With open data and preprint servers, medical science is finally delivering what was promised over 20 years ago. Change in scientific publishing, as in any industry, is easily predicted, hard to implement and longer than expected to achieve. Change of this significance also brings challenges for established publishing models, and inevitably too for JRSM. But our approach at JRSM is to place ourselves firmly on the side of doing the right thing by patients and the public, and that means aligning ourselves with best practice in scientific publishing.

Elsewhere, this is a packed issue. We cover cancer control in low- and middle income countries, ³ image-guided ablation in lung cancer, ⁴ the vaccination crisis ⁵ and the design of clinical trials. ⁶ Meanwhile, our series on Winston Churchill’s illnesses tell the story of his stroke in 1955. ⁷ Most importantly, perhaps, we publish a review of the annual competency assessment that determines career progress of trainees. ⁸ As with much of medical training, there is room for improvement.