Enhancing Research Transparency

Thursday 17th December, 3-4 pm GMT/ 4pm-5pm CET / 7am-8am Pacific Time

Part of the ECR Research on Research Seminar Series.

Beyond the “tip of the iceberg”: From Synchronic to Diachronic Knowledge Production

Daniel Morillo-Cuadrado, UNED, Spain

Open Science reforms have multiplied the outputs through which research is communicated beyond peer-reviewed articles: datasets, protocols, and preregistrations, among others. However, these outputs remain the tip of the iceberg: a collection of intentional “snapshots” of the actual research, at specific moments in time. The process leading to them remains largely implicit, hiding a plethora of information: how hypotheses emerge and change, why decisions are made, or which alternatives are abandoned. I call this output-centred model “synchronic knowledge production”, and argue that it sets a limit on transparency. I will introduce a “diachronic knowledge production” model, which proposes to represent the evolution of scientific knowledge as a “temporal footprint”: a persistent, verifiable, and interpretable record that connects synchronic outputs to the process that produced them. Such a record would allow the scientific community to take a deeper look into the research beneath, disclosing how scientific knowledge itself evolves. I will then discuss its foreseen benefits and caveats with the audience.

Policy Finder: A Web Tool to Help Funders Promote Clinical Trial Transparency

Delwen Franzen, BIH-QUEST Center for Responsible Research at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany

Transparency is core to responsible research: it enables the appraisal of research quality, mitigates biases, and facilitates evidence synthesis. This is particularly important for clinical trials, which involve human participants and inform medical decision-making. Yet trials often lack transparency; for example, trial results are frequently delayed, unavailable, or not adequately linked to trial registrations. Research funders are well positioned to advance clinical trial transparency through their policies, grant evaluation processes, and compliance monitoring. As part of the Empowering Funders for Enhanced Clinical Trial Transparency (EFFECTT) project, we developed the Policy Finder, a publicly accessible web tool that enables funders and the wider clinical trial community to explore and compare funder policies on trial transparency, assess their alignment with WHO standards, and identify opportunities to strengthen and harmonize policies. In this talk, I will briefly describe the participatory process that informed the development of the Policy Finder, including interviews with international non-commercial trial funders and co-creation workshops with funders and other stakeholders. I will then give a live demonstration of its key features and potential applications, and conclude with reflections on its future development and the broader challenge of translating meta-research into practical tools to support research transparency.

About the Speaker

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the BIH-QUEST Center for Responsible Research at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin in Berlin. I conduct meta-research projects that combine tool development and stakeholder engagement to support responsible research practices, with a current focus on transparency in clinical trials. Beyond this work, I am interested in reforms in scholarly communication, research funding, and research culture. My background is in systemic neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh and LMU in Munich.

Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/mOEnwTXTT5KFD-U8_nNnIg