QUALITY AND TRANSPARENCY
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Data Authorship as an Incentive to Data Sharing

The MRCT Center, in collaboration with Harvard University and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), released a Sounding Board in the New England Journal of Medicine on the concept of data authorship, a designation and system of credit meant to recognize the efforts the data generators and data sharers.

As we promote the value of cooperation and data sharing, the MRCT Center is conscious of the significant contributions of data generators who voluntarily make their data available for others in the service of public health and scientific advancement. We are aware of both the increasing calls to make data accessible and the absence of a system of credit and recognition for data sharing.

In this just published NEJM Sounding Board, MRCT Center Faculty Co-Director Dr. Barbara Bierer and collaborators from Harvard University and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) put forward the concept of data authorship as a means for providing academic credit to data generators and incentivizing the sharing of data. This proposal rests on the foundational work of others who have advanced data citation and the FAIR principles, which have made progress possible in the first place.

Read more about the Sounding Board in the New England Journal of Medicine