Encouraging Transparency

AAPS journals adopt data sharing policies.

New discoveries and corroboration of experiments advance science. When a researcher makes a new discovery, others need to build upon it for the discovery to gain momentum, interest, and thus funding. In today’s competitive, proprietary scientific community, data reproducibility is critical because researchers cannot afford to perform negative experiments.

Many scientists, institutions, and publishers believe that scientific research is currently undergoing a data reproducibility crisis. In 2016, Nature reported that “70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments,” and 90% of surveyed researchers believe there is a crisis.¹

The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) partners with Springer Nature to publish AAPS’ four scholarly journals. Springer Nature has been integral in supporting and promoting data integrity. Along with other publishers,² Springer Nature signed onto the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines in 2017.³ “Reproducibility of research can be improved by increasing transparency of the research process and products,”⁴ explains the TOP Guidelines Committee.

Since 2013, Nature has requested that authors submit a checklist, showing details of experimental design and analysis. Starting in May 2017, Nature now requires that checklist, which is published as a supplement to each article. “This is another step in encouraging transparency, in ensuring that papers contain sufficient methodological detail, and in improving statistics reviewing and reporting,”⁵ states a Nature editorial.

Springer Nature also requires all its journals to adhere to one of their data policies,⁶ ranging from encouraging authors to share their data to requiring authors to share their data. AAPS’ three traditional journals have chosen the policies shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1

Peter Swaan, Pharmaceutical Research editor-in-chief, notes that the journal chose Type 2 because it “has mandatory data deposition rules for certain data types, such as protein sequences, microarray data, gene polymorphisms, and linked genotype/phenotype data. This is in line with most biochemical journals. Since Pharm Res receives a fair number of articles in this area, we wanted authors to conform with general data deposition rules in this field.”

AAPS Open adheres to the Springer Open policy on data and materials, which “strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely be either deposited in publicly available repositories…or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files….”⁷

Sharing data is integral in experiment transparency; and transparency is integral in judgment of experiment viability. Do you have an opinion on data reproducibility in the pharmaceutical sciences? Discuss this topic with your peers and colleagues on AAPS Communities.

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REFERENCES

1. Baker M. 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility. Nature News Feature. May 25, 2016. Accessed July 20, 2018.
2. Aalbersberg IJ. Elsevier supports TOP Guidelines in ongoing efforts to ensure research quality and transparency. Elsevier Connect. September 7, 2017. Accessed July 23, 2018.
3. Announcement: Transparency upgrade for Nature journals. Nature . March 15, 2017. Accessed July 20, 2018.
4. Transparency and Openness Promotion. Wiki website. Accessed July 24, 2018.
5. Announcement: Towards greater reproducibility for life-sciences research in Nature. May 31, 2017. Accessed July 20, 2018.
6. Research Data Policy Types. Springer Nature website. Accessed July 20, 2018.
7. Editorial Policies. SpringerOpen website. Accessed July 24, 2018.