Policy

Developing Data Sharing Policies

We’ve been working with the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest funders of public health research, and other science funders to figure out what stands in the way of greater sharing or data, and to suggest ways of changing it.

OpenEpi: A new culture for public health data?is an analysis, commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, looks at some of the major obstacles to greater sharing of data. While the technical challenges are not trivial, it concludes that the biggest hurdle is cultural resistance from epidemiologists ourselves. The OpenEpi document was written to inform a meeting of epidemiologists, science funders and policy-makers. Participants were invited to develop a Code of Conduct on data sharing.

The Draft Code of Conduct was presented and discussed during the Ministerial Meeting on Health Research held in Bamako in December 2008. Presentation slides can be found here

Science funders are not the only ones who can prise open fiercely-guarded stores of epidemiological data. Biomedical journals have the potential to be enormously influential, as these briefing notes for journal editors and research funders make clear.

Journals have, indeed begun to take the issue seriously. We’ve contributed to commentaries on the subject in The Lancet and the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation (in press).