Authors of trials from high-ranking anesthesiology journals were not willing to share raw data

Status, use and impact of sharing individual participant data from clinical trials: a scoping review

“…Of 619 RCTs published between 2014 and 2016 in seven high-ranked anaesthesiology journals, only 24 (4%) had a data-sharing statement and none provided data in the manuscript or a link to data in a repository. 25 In a survey targeting the authors of these RCTs, 86 (14%) responded and raw data was obtained from 24 participants. The authors conclude that willingness to share data among anaesthesiology RCTs is very low.…”

A Reproduction Analysis of 106 Articles Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, 2016–2018

“…The 78 non-reproduced studies can be distinguished by those for which we could not access the data and by those for which data were available but at least one result could not be reproduced. We lacked access to data for 20 articles, which is a smaller proportion compared to previous reproduction assessments in other fields (e.g., Gabelica, Cavar, and Puljak 2019). The reason for this might be that including the raw data in an article has been recommended as a standard of good practice (Schneider and Wagemann 2010).…”

Need for greater transparency in documenting informed consent

“…A variety of derivative documents with different approaches attempt to address this. Here Haynes et al [5] report on the McMaster Premium Literature Service (PLUS), running continuously since 2003 to alert clinicians to quality-assessed, studies and systematic reviews judged by peer clinicians to be clinically interesting. Major findings were that a small set of journals is never enough and even for leading clinical journals, the proportion of articles that are of adequate research merit and high clinical interest is less than 10 percent.…”

“…Many journals including JCE [12] have articles and editorials calling for the sharing of raw data from trials both for transparency as well as being made available for individual patient data systematic reviews. The article in this issue by Gabelica e al [13] provides another example of the challenge reported by Polanin last year in JCE of the resistance to sharing the raw data; there are ongoing substantive concerns about inappropriate use of publicly available raw data so perhaps the ICJME should take the lead in this as they did with Trial Registration to establish not only mandatory requirements but processes to avoid abuse of this data such as the data only being released on submission of a satisfactory protocol.…”