LAUSR

The well-known international recycling logo sometimes is accompanied by the phrase “Reduce, reuse, recycle”, which expresses that we should reduce our consumption of nonrenewable resources (such as oil), re-use products (such as shopping bags made with plastic obtained from oil), and recycle when their useful life has ended, to be reborn as new products (such as plastic park benches). How does this apply to research data? In terms of reduce: in the last two decades, concerns have increasingly been expressed that the biomedical research “industrial complex” is tremendously wasteful [1]. We start research without first doing a careful analysis (e.g. using a systematic review) whether the research question still needs to be answered. We create research designs that are inadequate to answer our question, because our sample is too small, or key outcomes are not collected, or we allow attrition of subjects to such a degree that a randomized controlled trial degenerates into a non-controlled study of a selective sample. Sometimes the problem of waste is that we have a sample that is too large, or we collect too many outcomes, or collect them too often. Then, when we report the findings, we produce, using incorrect analytical methods, articles that selectively report outcomes, are inadequate to help readers understand the results of our research, or do not allow translation of the findings into clinical practice [2]. Awareness of the need to reduce research quantities and improve what remains is growing, and various individual researchers, journals, funding agencies and others have developed initiatives to spend always-limited research funds more parsimoniously. However, we are still far from a comprehensive solution to the waste of resources that Altman in 1994 called a scandal [3]. Reuse of data addresses the issue that sometimes researchers can use their data again. Reference here is not to (semi-)duplicate publication, where the same results are rehashed many times, but serendipity: researchers, thinking about the next research project or reading someone else’s paper, realize that their existing data might be useful in shining some (preliminary) light on a new question. Recycle in this context is not much different from Reuse, but is used to designate making one’s data available to other researchers for use in secondary analysis, individual patient data meta-analysis, reanalysis to check on the findings reported by the data creator, or for any other valid scientific purpose. More and more funding agencies, professional organizations, journals, and publishers now endorse Open Data—making ‘raw’ data available to researchers, clinicians and patients worldwide, with no or very limited restrictions as to what should be available when, to whom and how. Spinal Cord and its publisher, Springer Nature, and partner, the International Spinal Cord Society, all support this initiative, which is expressed in the journal’s Research Data Policy as follows: