Published 18 August 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3344
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3344

Letters

Making trial data public

Astronomical data lead the way

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

Astronomers have been making their raw data publicly available for some time, after a suitable delay to enable those who came up with the idea (and the funding) to perform the first analyses. For example, one organisation releases data to the public 18 months after archiving.1 Perhaps a suitable time for release of data held by pharmaceutical companies would be shortly after the patent for the drug has expired.2

Secrecy might produce short term gains, but in the longer run it can only hinder progress.

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3344

Norman R Williams, senior clinical project manager1

1 UCL Medical School, Whittington Campus, London N19 5LW

n.williams@ctg.ucl.ac.uk

Competing interests: None declared.

  1. UKIDSS. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey. www.ukidss.org/
  2. Smyth RL. Making information about clinical trials publicly available. BMJ 2009;338:b2473. (25 June.)[Free Full Text]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Making information about clinical trials publicly available
Rosalind L Smyth
BMJ 2009 338: b2473. [Extract] [Full Text]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ