WHO to Implement New Data Sharing and Reporting Protocol in the Context of a Public Health Emergency

To improve timely access to data in the context of a public health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) announces that the Bulletin of the World Health Organization will implement a new data sharing and reporting protocol. The protocol is established specifically to address the data gap that exists in responding to the current Zika virus epidemic and, in the first instance, will apply only to articles submitted in the context of this outbreak.

On submission to the Bulletin, all research manuscripts relevant to the Zika epidemic will be assigned a digital object identifier and posted online in the “Zika Open” collection within 24 hours while undergoing peer review. The data in these papers will thus be attributed to the authors while being freely available for reader scrutiny and unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited as indicated by the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organizations (CC BY IGO 3.0) license. Should a paper be accepted by the Bulletin following peer review, this open access review period will be reported in the final publication.

The first paper can be found HERE.

Source: WHO