Plan to Increase Access to Results of FDA-Funded Scientific Research

"... Public access to the results of FDA-funded scientific research furthers the agency’s public health mission. The broad availability of scientific information and underlying data allows for the critical review, replication, and verification of findings that are central to the scientific method. Making research findings and the digital data supporting those findings accessible and analyzable promotes robust and open communication with the scientific community thereby bolstering the credibility of scientific findings and the regulatory decision-making based upon those findings. The availability of agency scientific information advances public health by sparking scientific discovery, including prompting the scientific community to address critical challenges in medical product development. Facilitating the free flow of information underlying the agency’s decision-making and advances in regulatory science, to the extent permitted by law, allows the public, Congress, media, and industry to better understand FDA’s decisions and the scientific basis for its regulatory decision-making ..."