AAMRI feedback on the NHMRC’s draft guides for Authorship and Management of Data and Information in Research

AAMRI provided feedback to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) on two draft guides that support the 2018 Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research: (1) Guide to Authorship and (2) Guide to Management of Data and Information in Research. These two guides form part of a series of guides supporting the Code.

 

Feedback on the NHMRC’s draft guide to Authorship

AAMRI supports the adoption of the authorship guide and overall found it to be a well thought through document that will be helpful to institutions and researchers in determining how to meet their authorship responsibilities.

As well as specific feedback on each section of the guide, AAMRI recommended that:

  • as a best practice guide it could provide further details on responsibilities of researchers in relation to publications and offer researchers and Institutions options for handling authorship disputes.
  • the guide could increase clarity in several key statements by changing the use of the word “should” to “must” or “may” to avoid uncertainty among readers about whether the statement is desirable or required in order to comply with the Code of Conduct.

 

Feedback on the NHMRC’s draft guide to Management of Data and Information in Research

Overall, AAMRI found that the draft Guide is a good attempt to include all issues in data management. However, it is very brief and by attempting to cover all disciplines and issues has ended up by being quite vague and non-specific in some areas. There is also an emphasis on data management during research and particularly research outputs which is only part of the data management cycle when conducting research.

As well as specific feedback on each section of the guide, AAMRI recommended that the guide be revised to acknowledge the entire data management cycle, which starts with the planning of the project. For example, this includes ensuring consent forms will allow sharing of information or data/sample re-use for other projects in the future. Recognising the early phases of the data management cycle is particularly important given the increased data sharing requirements with respect to clinical trials and human research.