Data Sharing and the Journal — NEJM

"We want to clarify, given recent concern about our policy, that the Journal is committed to data sharing in the setting of clinical trials. As stated in the Institute of Medicine report from the committee1 on which I served and the recent editorial by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE),2 we believe there is a moral obligation to the people who volunteer to participate in these trials to ensure that their data are widely and responsibly used. Journal policy will therefore follow that outlined in the ICMJE editorial and the IOM report: when appropriate systems are in place, we will require a commitment from authors to make available the data that underlie the reported results of their work within 6 months after we publish them. In the process of formulating our policy, we spoke to clinical trialists around the world. Many were concerned that data sharing would require them to commit scarce resources with little direct benefit. Some of them spoke pejoratively in describing data scientists who analyze the data of others.3 To make data sharing successful, it is important to acknowledge and air those concerns.3 In our view, however, researchers who analyze data collected by others can substantially improve human health. We need your help to move medicine forward and improve patient care. Our enemy is disease. By working in collaboration, as we have suggested,3 biologists, data scientists, and clinical trialists can advance the art, and everyone will gain. Clinical trial data are some of the highest quality data in medicine. They should be used responsibly and extensively to help alleviate suffering. We believe that we will all benefit most if this is done collaboratively, but the Journal’s data sharing policy will apply in all settings."