On 20 April, the new article “Mapping of Data-Sharing Repositories for Paediatric Clinical Research-A Rapid Review” was published in Data, a peer reviewed MDPI’s open access journal.
The paper discusses the re-use of individual paediatric patient data from clinical trials, which is essential to overcome specific ethical, regulatory, methodological and economic issues that hinder the progress of paediatric research.
The investigation looked at existing data-sharing repositories (DSRs) through a review of the platforms providing access to electronic requests, which took place in two stages: a first identification phase, followed by a second analysis using eight purpose-built indicators. From an initial set of forty-five publicly available DSRs, twenty-one were identified as meeting the eligibility criteria and only two were found to be fully focused on the paediatric population.
This paper's impact lies in its ability to stimulate data sharing through repositories and promote their use for research. By mapping paediatric repositories containing Individual Patient Data (IPD), it sheds light on data availability and encourages reuse of existing data and collaborative efforts among researchers. This promotes open data practices, enhancing accessibility and reproducibility in paediatric research. The results of this study show that, despite increased awareness, paediatrics remains an area where targeted efforts are still needed to close this data-sharing gap.

Read the full article here.