Biomedical research becomes more open about funding and data

Biomedical research is becoming increasingly open and transparent by providing more and more information on funding, conflicts of interest and data sharing in their publications, according to a study by recent publications.

John Ioannidis of Stanford University in California and his colleagues reviewed 149 biomedical research reports published between 2015 and 2017, to determine how many of them included information on key indicators of transparency, such as as the name of labor funding, potential conflicts of interest of researchers, and the availability of raw data and comprehensive research protocols.

Great improvement

They found that the majority of documents contained statements about funding and conflicts of interest (69% and 65%, respectively) and that almost one in five mentioned publicly available data – although Only one included a link to a complete study protocol. The work was published in PLoS Biology November 20th¹.

This was a clear improvement over the results of a previous study by some of the same researchers, who found that, out of a sample of 441 articles published between 2000 and 2014, most contained little or no any information about funding, conflicts or data sharing.² (see "Opening").

"This is a reason for optimism," says co-author Joshua Wallach, who is studying research practices at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Culture change

Statements about funding and conflict are important because they are sources of potential bias, which can affect the design and conduct of studies, he explains. Easy access to data and experimental protocols is essential for replicating scientific results. "The fact that we now see statements about data sharing shows that culture is changing," said Wallach.

About 5% of the articles studied corresponded totally or partially to previous works, which is an encouraging sign but which remains lower than that desired by Wallach. "We need a greater adoption of replication," he says. "This should not be treated as a second-rate science."

Although the results indicate that the biomedical community shows a greater acceptance of the importance of open science, Wallach attributes some of the progress made in journal changes: many now require statements on funding and conflicts. Interests and have policies on data sharing.

But Wallach says newspapers could do more to promote protocol sharing. And public repositories such as PubMed should make it easier to find information about funding, conflicts and data for people who do not have access to the full document, he said.

Jim Woodgett, director of research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, explains that articles like this change the work of scientists by revealing the lack of transparency that existed in the past. But this type of culture change takes a lot of effort and universities and journals need to take the lead. "Nobody says no to a newspaper requirement," he says.