NIH Clarifies New Model Organisms Sharing Policy

Extract

The replication of results is one of the basic tenets of the scientific method. But if discoveries are made with unique model organisms or other materials that no one else can use, reproducibility becomes more difficult and expensive, if not impossible.

Although the National Institutes of Health has required recipients of its grants to share these unique resources, a new policy that went into effect October 1 requires researchers to include in grant applications specific plans for sharing model organisms and related materials.

Despite the fact that sharing is required by many funding agencies and journals, many researchers still refuse to share data and resources. For example, a survey of academic life scientists published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002 by Eric Campbell, Ph.D., found that 34% of those surveyed had been denied a request for data or materials and 8.9% admitted to denying a request in the previous 3 years.