Excerpt from “Why Medical Journals Must Make Researchers Share Data from Clinical Trials” by Elizabeth Loder, BMJ Acting Head of Research:
“From July 1 2015, the authors of all clinical trials published by the journal must agree to make individual patient data from the trial available to other researchers upon reasonable request. Among major medical journals, only PLOS also requires data sharing as a condition of publication…
A landmark report released this April by the Institute of Medicine concluded that data sharing is in the public interest and should become ‘the norm’.
But sharing is as yet not standard in the medical research community. Instead, the current research enterprise is probably better characterised as a “walled garden” in which most industry and academic investigators carefully control access to the information collected in clinical trials.”