As part of the PREMIER project, a document sharing system was developed and made freely available as a template to all interested parties…

The National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has been gathering a list of currently available public resources that are, or can…

 We (preclinical) learn from the Big Brother (clinical). For example, they recognize the risks of bias in study design, conduct and…

According to a recent press release from the European parliament, an EU-wide action plan is requested with ambitious and achievable objectives for phasing-out…

Science Forum: A community-led initiative for training in reproducible research Reproducibility: expect less of the scientific paper Share methods through visual…

Although the issues related to poor quality of medical research are well known, the research community fails to properly address them….

With the advent of tools for recording and manipulating activity with high spatiotemporal resolution in defined neural circuits in behaving animals,…

In registered reports (RRs), initial peer review and in-principle acceptance occur before knowing the research outcomes. This combats publication bias and…

Preclinical systematic reviews are vital; they serve many purposes by assessing the range and quality of the evidence. Through these reviews…

Together with the group of Ulf Kahlert from the University of Düsseldorf, PAASP’s Björn Gerlach published an article in F1000Research on…

Do I need to consider the sex of the animals for my study? Is the background noise level likely to vary?…

We have recently introduced the Materials, Design, Analysis, and Reporting (MDAR) framework aiming at helping authors, editors, and other interested parties to increase…

The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) has designed a new ‘primer series’ to introduce important topics in open and reproducible scholarship.Each primer…

On 25 August 2021, at the Virtual FENS Regional Meeting, Anton Bespalov and Malgorzata Pietraszek (PAASP) moderated the Special Interest Event…

European research infrastructures support academic research by providing networking opportunities and informing about current topics. In this context, the ERIC Forum…

Concluding the pilot implementation efforts initiated by the EQIPD consortium team, the first four Research Units have implemented the EQIPD Quality…

We have made substantial updates to the following EQIPD Toolbox items: 1.4.3.3 Academia-academia: Research as service: The recommendations outlined here are…

Besides this Newsletter, you will also find all relevant news and developments related to EQIPD on the eqipd.online website and in the EQIPD Toolbox….

NEWS  EQIPD news News on website – Read more Update on EQIPD Toolbox – Read more EQIPD-certified research units – Read more Workshop on…

Writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) is a usual procedure for any organization with a quality manage system. However, also an increasing…

European research infrastructures support academic research by providing networking opportunities and informing about current topics. In this context, the ERIC Forum…

PAASP network member Christoph Emmerich will introduce the EQIPD framework in the context of scientist.com. Scientist.com is a stakeholder of EQIPD…

NEWS           – New EQIPD paper published – Read more          – The MDAR Framework –…

The analytic strategy of p-hacking has rapidly accelerated the achievement of psychological scientists’ goals (e.g., publications & tenure), but has suffered…

When you can see the world clearly, it’s easy to get where you want to go: You might still get where…

On June 7, 2021, the FDA approved aducanumab, an amyloid beta-directed monoclonal antibody indicated for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.However, most…

Nonreplicable publications are cited more than replicable ones Good research begins long before papers get written Why indirect contributions matter for…

Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in…

Scientists routinely use images to display data and images are a critical part of a scientific report or publication.However, many resources…

Within preclinical research, attention has focused on experimental design and how current practices can lead to poor reproducibility. There are numerous…

The long-held belief that experimental standardization begets replicability has recently been challenged – based on the observation that the reduction of…

Reproducibility of data has never been more at the forefront of scientific endeavour than now. In their latest contribution, the International…

On 21 April 2021 a virtual EQIPD workshop entitled “Rigor, reproducibility and data management in nonclinical research” was organized in Finland…

The Royal Society Open Science is promoting Registered Reports (RRs) by welcoming the submission of Stage 2 Registered Reports that have been…

The EQIPD Toolbox now contains a set of principles, which may help scientists, stakeholders and users to better understand what the…

Incomplete or imprecise reporting of life sciences research contributes to challenges with reproducibility, replicability, and biomedical applications. For the last three…

The manuscript “Introduction to the EQIPD quality system” was recently accepted by and published in eLife. This publication marks an important milestone…

NEWS from the PAASP network          – New series of EQIPD lectures – Read more         …

A poor understanding of what results from statistical tests do and do not mean and an over-reliance on p-values is seen…

We are all aware of the challenges modern science is facing. And we, like most readers of this newsletter, are working…

Many publications leave it to readers to guess whether reported data are based on independent biological replicates (e.g. number of animals)…

by Plinio Cabrera Casarotto, PhD,Editor-in-Chief JRepNeurosci The replicability of results is a cornerstone of science. We can only rely on the outcomes…

Science Forum: Improving preclinical studies through replications Assessment of transparency indicators across the biomedical literature: How open is open? Von Botswana…

Research on memory reconsolidation has been booming in the last two decades, with numerous high-impact publications reporting promising amnestic interventions in…

Software is increasingly essential in most research, and much of this software is developed specifically for and during research. To make this…

The way in which we assess researchers has been under the radar in the past few years. Critics argue that current…

Image data are universal in life sciences research. Their proper handling is not. A significant proportion of image data in research…

Selectively publishing ‘positive’ results distorts the available evidence for scientific claims. For the past decade, scientists from different fields have been…

In 2018, the EU has launched the European Brain Research Area (EBRA) project – a catalysing platform designed to coordinate brain…

PAASP is a member of the science and industry cluster BioRN focusing on the Rhein-Neckar area. The cluster has a get-together with…

Sandrine Bongiovanni and Mathias Baumann (Novartis), Fiona Ducrey (Sanofi), Thomas Steckler and Anja Gilis (Janssen), Anton Bespalov (PAASP), Lee Monk (UCB),…

EQIPD has prepared and recorded a series of lectures introducing its novel Quality System. In these presentations, project coordinator Professor Malcolm Macleod provides…

Cohen Veterans Bioscience and ECNP announced on March 8th the “Negative Data Award 2021. Applicants are asked to submit a published…

Western blotting represents a powerful technique for the semi-quantitative determination of protein expression and the detection of protein modifications like phosphorylation…

NEWS from the PAASP network Successful adaption of the EQIPD Quality System to specific research needs – Read more PAASP publication: Guidelines…

Spreadsheets are widely used as a digital tool to capture, organize, process and archive information. However, to organize the information provided…

Communicating science is difficult. We were told to tell exciting stories around our scientific discoveries – and it is certainly true…

In one of the recent Nature issues, there was a piece called “France’s reforms: the costs of competitiveness”. In a nutshell,…

Since the seminal paper by Laura Bohn 20 years ago, expectations have built up that biased mu-opioid receptor agonists will deliver what we…

Collaboration on the road to better preclinical research Research integrity: nine ways to move from talk to walk Compliance Services for…

Scientific claims in biomedical research are typically derived from statistical analyses. However, misuse or misunderstanding of statistical procedures and results permeate…

In biomedical research, limitations in the design and reporting of experiments are known to cause avoidable waste of time and resources….

Many researchers remain tempted to draw causal conclusions from observational data despite acknowledging that mere association is not causation because causal…

Preprints increase accessibility and can speed scholarly communication if researchers view them as credible enough to read and use. Preprint services…

Some causes for the problem of not being able to reproduce the work of others can be addressed when publishing scientific…

While 90% of scientists surveyed by Nature feel that there is a “reproducibility crisis” in science (Baker, 2016), and major media…

Martin – once again – made it into the Clarivate List of Highly Cited Researchers 2020. This list recognizes true pioneers in…

The BIOtech network Rhein-Neckar (BioRN) held its annual (digitally) conference virtually on November 20th. The network brings together a mix of…

PAASP and the Interdisciplinary Neurobehavioral Core (INBC) at the University of Heidelberg aim to establish a quality framework for Core Facilities…

The PAASP team has published an article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, together with research groups from the Fraunhofer IME-TMP and the…

The EQIPD Quality System is the result of a collaborative effort between several people and organizations, yet it cannot address all…

The GOT-IT team, consisting of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute, Charité and PAASP, announces the publication of their guidelines for target validation…

The Global Preclinical Data Forum (GPDF), a jointly sponsored U.S. and European initiative, funded by Cohen Veterans Bioscience (CVB) and the…

PAASP NEWS GPDF, CVB and ECNP announced the Winner of the 2020 Best Negative Data Prize – Read more Funding opportunities: Accelerating Publication…

We have written repeatedly (LINK, LINK) about the border between the fields of Good Research Practice and Research Integrity being more nuanced…

When antibodies mislead: the quest for validation Von Maus zu Mensch durch das Tal des Todes (in German) Researchers’ Perceptions of…

Recently, a petition was offered to the European Commission calling for an immediate ban on animal testing. Although a Europe-wide moratorium…

The long-term accessibility of research data is fundamental in the economy of the research production process. However, the availability of data…

The reproducibility crisis has emerged as an important concern across many fields of science. Systems biology modelling, which involves mathematical representation…

Please following this LINK to our Editorial “Enhancing quality in preclinical data: Of hot science and cool quality”, which was just published in…

EQIPD (European Quality In Preclinical Data) is a project that was funded by the Innovative Medicine Initiative with the vision to enable a…

We are happy to announce that PAASP is part of the PEERS (Platform for the Exchange of Experimental Research Standards) initiative, which is supported by…

To address the bias toward the publication of novel positive results, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) and…

Most of our readers are biologists but nevertheless we are occasionally exposed to medicinal chemistry literature describing novel research tools, lead…

A recent report by Tiwari et al. investigated the reproducibility rate in systems biology modelling by reproducing the mathematical representation of 455 kinetic…

A. Background & Definitions Microsoft Office (incl. Word, Excel and PowerPoint) offers the possibility to create a digital signature (digital ID) as…

library(scales)library(ggplot2) ## sample sizen1 <- 8n2 <- 16n3 <- 32n4 <- 64 ## iterations m <- 500yfig <- vector()xfig <- vector()facetfig…

There is currently no generic tool for producing figures to display and explore the risk‐of‐bias assessments that routinely take place as…

It is often observed and discussed that there are substantial inter-individual differences that can overshadow effects of otherwise effective treatments.  These…

In a recent case before the US District Court in the District of Nevada, the judge ruled six method-of-use patents to…

Our stu Over the past several years, more and more journals have revised their guides for authors and included specific instructions…

Five better ways to assess science $48 Billion Is Lost to Avoidable Experiment Expenditure Every Year Opinion: Surgisphere Fiasco Highlights Need…

Biases at the level of study design, conduct, data analysis and reporting have been recognized as major contributing factors to poor…

For neuroscience and brain research to progress, it is critical to differentiate between experimental manipulations which have no effect and those…

The way in which we assess researchers has been under the radar in the past few years. Critics argue that current…

Understanding the variability of criteria and thresholds for promotion and tenure applied across institutions requires a systematic empirical assessment. Therefore, the…

Context-dependent biological variation presents a unique challenge to the reproducibility of results in experimental animal research, because organisms’ responses to experimental…

For knowledge to benefit research and society, it must be trustworthy. Trustworthy research is robust, rigorous, and transparent at all stages…

Staff at QED Biomedical Ltd have conducted research to demonstrate how sample bias in patient- derived tumour tissue samples with somatic…