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Letters Data sharing in medical research

Why Cochrane should prioritise sharing data

BMJ 2018; 362 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3229 (Published 30 July 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;362:k3229

This article has a correction. Please see:

  1. Farhad Shokraneh, information specialist1,
  2. Clive E Adams, professor, chair of mental health services research2,
  3. Mike Clarke, professor2,
  4. Laura Amato, psychiatrist3,
  5. Hilda Bastian, former coordinator4,
  6. Elaine Beller, associate professor5,
  7. Jon Brassey, director6,
  8. Rachelle Buchbinder, professor7,
  9. Marina Davoli, director3,
  10. Chris Del Mar, professor5,
  11. Paul Glasziou, professor and director5,
  12. Christian Gluud, head of department8,
  13. Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine and director9,
  14. Tammy Hoffmann, professor of clinical epidemiology5,
  15. John PA Ioannidis, professor of medicine and metrics co-director10,
  16. Mahesh Jayaram, senior lecturer11,
  17. Joey Kwong, research assistant professor12,
  18. David Moher, director13,
  19. Erika Ota, professor14,
  20. Rebecca Syed Sheriff, honorary lecturer15,
  21. Luke Vale, professor16,
  22. Ben Goldacre, senior clinical research fellow9
  1. 1Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  2. 2Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland
  3. 3Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region-ASL Rome, Italy
  4. 4Cochrane Consumer Network
  5. 5Centre for Evidence Based Practice, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia
  6. 6Trip Database
  7. 7Monash University and Cabrini Institute, Australia
  8. 8The Copenhagen Trial Unit, Centre for Clinical Intervention Research, Rigshospitalet; Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark
  9. 9Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, University of Oxford, UK
  10. 10Stanford University, USA
  11. 11Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia
  12. 12JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  13. 13Centre for Journalology, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Canada
  14. 14Global Health Nursing, Graduate School of Nursing Science, St. Luke’s International University, Tokyo, Japan
  15. 15Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
  16. 16Cochrane Incontinence, Newcastle University, UK
  1. farhad.shokraneh{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Packer1 says that the one who submits a research for public good should be ready to receive a request for data sharing for examination and re-analysis and that tax payers assume that a national agency is checking such data and analysis. Here we discuss Cochrane’s practice on data sharing.

Open science, as endorsed by the G7,2 includes sharing data, computer code, and materials. It is essential for reproducibility, collaboration, and innovation. We support the work of Cochrane, but are concerned that Cochrane is not sharing all its reviews’ data. These data should be fully accessible for reuse by third parties.

Cochrane, a non-profit private company3 and registered charity, produces and maintains systematic reviews in health and social care. Its work is undertaken by a global network of thousands of people,4 and its support largely comes from public funding.5 Most people producing Cochrane reviews are volunteers not specifically funded for this work,67 and Cochrane encourages “crowdsourcing” of work.8910

Cochrane editorial bases help volunteers obtain study reports and manually extract the wealth of data needed to generate systematic reviews.111213 Cochrane teams use RevMan software14 to produce files in standard format (XML), storing information on the studies, their methods, and results for publication in the Cochrane Library.

Benefits of sharing extracted data from trials and systematic reviews are well known, as are the costs of not sharing.13151617 Sharing maximises transparency, reliability of data extraction, and syntheses. It improves access to data—saving time and money—and opens new avenues of inquiry.18 Sharing is associated with increased citations,19 more publications,20 and reuse for new purposes.16

Structured data from Cochrane should be fully accessible for download, reuse, and review (box 1). Currently, they are not. …

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