BRIF proposal to the Committee Of Publication Ethics (COPE)

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To the Committee of Publication Ethics We would like to submit to COPE consideration an issue associated to the use of the bioresources which we believe have great relevance on publication ethics. Much of our present-day medical knowledge is acquired with the aid of bioresources, databases and bioinformatics tools that are made available by biobanks. Research biobanks are defined as collections of samples of human bodily substances (e.g., cells, tissues, blood, or DNA as the physical medium of genetic information) that are or can be associated with personal data and information on their donors. Biobanks are therefore collections of both samples and data. Bioresources include biobanks as well as databases independent of physical samples and useful for biomedical research. They need to be easily accessible to facilitate advancement of research and nowadays a policy on bioresource sharing is highly promoted. There is no doubt that most biomedical publications relate to data obtained on collections of samples that are often derived from different sources, or to data in relevant databases (e.g. mutation databases). Consequently, the quality of research depends on the quality of bioresources (both samples, data and databases). At publication level the effort of recognition of stakeholders in establishing and maintaining such resources is often neglected and/or highly heterogeneous. Also, we are still far from establishing guidelines for the citation of such contributions. The main objective of Bioresource Research Impact Factor (BRIF, (https://gen2phen.org/groups/brif-bio-resource-impactfactor)) is to promote the sharing of bioresources by creating a link between their initiators/implementers and the impact of scientific research using them. As you can read in the paper recently published in Nature Genetics (vol 43, 6, June 2011 p. 503) in January 2011 the first BRIF workshop was held in Toulouse, France. After the Toulouse workshop, a number of subgroups were created to work online on a different aspect of BRIF. Each subgroup includes experts in their fields. More recently, an article on BRIF as a tool for improving bioresource sharing in biomedical research has been submitted to PLOS Medicine. Within the "BRIF Connection to editors" subgroup, a proposal for sensitizing journal editors to BRIF issues and modifying their editorial guidelines accordingly has been extensively discussed and studied in recent months. On behalf of the BRIF working group, it was agreed to submit the issue to COPE consideration to be included as a discussion point in your website and possibly in your guidelines to address the ethical and editorial problems associated to biobanks and more generally bioresources, which are becoming of great relevance within the scientific community. Please let us know what you think about this proposal. It is our intention to sensitize other committees and institutions concerned with editorial and ethical issues related to bioresources, such as for example, EASE, ESF, that we are going to contact shortly. The ICMJE has already been contacted for a possible insertion in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. We remain at your complete disposal for any more information you might need. The members of the “BRIF connection to Editors” subgroup: Anne Cambon-Thomsen (a), Laurence Mabile (a), Elena Bravo (b), Paola De Castro (c), Federica Napolitani (c), Carlo Petrini (d), Anna Maria Rossi (c) a) INSERM, U1027 and University of Toulouse, France b) Department of Haematology, Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Italian National Institute of Health, ISS, Rome, Italy c) Publishing Unit, Italian National Institute of Health, ISS, Rome, Italy d) Bioethics Unit, Italian National Institute of Health, ISS, Rome, Italy