Open access in cancer research
| 8 February, 2023 | Abbie nicholson |
With World Cancer Day and International Childhood Cancer Day taking place in February, the fight against the disease comes sharply into focus around the world.
Both days focus on raising awareness of the different forms of cancer, highlighting the need for equitable access to high-quality healthcare, and raising support for ongoing research and development to reduce its global impact.
Open access, and open research more broadly, can play a key role in this, helping to accelerate the pace of progress in both understanding the mechanisms of cancer and mitigating its impacts.
In light of World Cancer Day and International Childhood Cancer Day, we’re exploring how open research can help in this fight against cancer.
Three ways open practices can help cancer research
Removing barriers to scientific knowledge
Advancing the discovery and development of cancer diagnostics, treatments, and more must be a truly global effort, with participation from researchers worldwide. So, removing barriers to accessing and sharing scientific knowledge through open access initiatives is key.
Open access removes barriers to knowledge by eliminating journal subscriptions and, in some cases, it can also remove financial barriers – for example, HRB Open Research reduces costs to researchers by removing author-facing publishing fees.
Similarly, open publishing models can minimise the possibility of editorial bias, while open peer review can provide more opportunities for learning from others in the field.
As a result, open research practices ensure not only that all researchers’ voices play an equal part in the scholarly literature, but also that the latest findings, methods, tools, and expert opinions are easily and readily accessible for the diverse research community to build upon.
Enabling rapid and efficient research advances
By removing these barriers to accessing and sharing knowledge, open publishing models also help to advance cancer research more rapidly and efficiently.
Open research requires full transparency, publishing everything from the initial methods and protocols to the data and software used throughout the process and the final results and analysis. As researchers can access everything that went into a research project, open models improve the reproducibility of findings, allowing others to build on research more easily and quickly in constantly evolving studies.
Similarly, publishing all research without restriction, including null or negative results, can enable more efficiency in research. Researchers can avoid unnecessary repetition of previously unsuccessful studies or methods and instead focus on conducting new, value-driven research.
Study Protocols and Data Notes are key examples of open research article types that are not traditionally published, but which can help improve reproducibility, provide solid foundations for future research, and provide complete transparency in research, alongside wider open and FAIR data initiatives.
Increasing collaboration
Finally, publishing cancer research open access can significantly improve the visibility of methods and results, helping it to have a greater real-world impact.
Open access research can be found, used, and built upon more easily by others outside the immediate research community, including policymakers, public officials, charities, healthcare organisations, and NGOs – all of whom can help to amplify the reach of cancer research and provide a greater chance of implementing it in real-world settings.
Open access cancer research on HRB Open Research
HRB Open Research provides an open access venue for HRB-funded researchers, and many in the Irish cancer research community have already published their research via the Platform.
You can read a snapshot of the latest cancer research on HRB Open Research below.
Current management of adults receiving oral anti-cancer medications: A scoping review protocol
Cancer treatment has experienced rapid change in recent years, with new methods being developed and refined to improve patient experience and outcomes.
One such method is oral anti-cancer medication, which has risen in prevalence and now constitutes 25% of all anti-cancer medication. While it has many benefits, including more convenience for patients and the ability to have treatment at home compared to intravenous methods, it carries similar concerns to other methods.
This Study Protocol from Richmond et al. presents a protocol to comprehensively map the literature on current management of adults receiving oral anti-cancer medication. This is an initial step in a multi-phase research study aiming to establish and analyse the safety and efficacy of receiving oral treatments in the community.
A national cross-sectional survey of constipation in patients attending cancer centres in Ireland
A vital element of managing the impact of cancer and improving the quality of life of those living with it, is understanding how it interacts with other healthcare issues.
Gastrointestinal problems are common among cancer patients, including constipation, which can lead to pain, anorexia, nausea, and vomiting when left untreated.
In this Research Article, Ryan et al. examine the impact of constipation on cancer patients and found that its prevalence was 67% in research study participants – significantly higher than the average adult prevalence of 16%.
Despite this common occurrence, cancer-related constipation is inadequately recognised and treated, with Ryan et al. advocating for further study to help improve this.
GNOSIS: an R Shiny app supporting cancer genomics survival analysis with cBioPortal
This Software Tool Article is a great example of how open research practices can help advance cancer research, as Software Tool Articles are not typically published in traditional publishing models but are supported as an article type by HRB Open Research.
Since publishing, this Software Tool Article has become the second most-read article on the Platform in 2022, demonstrating the reach of open access research.
In it, King et al. illustrate how GNOSIS, an R Shiny app, supports clinician-researchers by helping them explore and better visualize clinical and genomic data, which can aid in future cancer research and potentially improve cancer patient outcomes.
You can find out more about this Software Tool in our interview with the author.
Start your open cancer research joruney
If you’re a HRB-funded researcher working in cancer research, publish your findings with HRB Open Research today for improved visibility, greater potential for real-world impact, and no author-facing charges.