Boris Barbour

Mar 8, 2024 | bmj.com | Boris Barbour

Susanne Stevens raises an excellent point in the first rapid response. The announcement of the policy of mandatory depositing of data in a "publicly accessible depository" makes it sound like the public will have unconditional access to the data, as it should. But the example given of the Vivli platform raises the worry that access may in fact be subject to all manner of gatekeeping and obstruction. Can the editors clarify whether unconditional public access *to the data* will be mandatory or not?

Aug 2, 2023 | editorandpublisher.com | Theo Baker |Stephanie Lee |Charles Piller |Boris Barbour

Denise-Marie Ordway | The Journalist's Resource PubPeer, a website where researchers critique one another’s work, has played a key role in helping journalists uncover scientific misconduct in several prominent investigative stories in recent years — including the student newspaper series that led to Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s recent resignation.

Jul 15, 2023 | bmj.com | Boris Barbour

Dear Sir,I wholeheartedly support this initiative. One does not need a long memory to recall the Surgisphere scandal, which would have been prevented by a data-access mandate. There are innumerable other examples. Unfortunately, we need to "trust but verify". I first acknowledge that effective anonymisation procedures and some restrictions may be necessary for sharing human data, and this will often be an issue in a journal like the BMJ.