On 20 March 2023, we celebrated the beginning of Make it Public Week – the first ever week dedicated to research transparency.
The week encouraged researchers to be transparent about all aspects of research, from recruiting participants all the way through to sharing the results.
Throughout the week, more than 300 experts from across health and social care research came together at webinars, workshops and panel discussions to share best practice and hear why transparency is crucial to good research.
Recordings now available
In case you missed it, you can now watch recordings of all the sessions from Make it Public Week.
Welcome to Make it Public Week
To launch the week, Matt Westmore, Chief Executive at the HRA, and special guest speaker Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care and Chief Executive Officer of National Institute for Health and Care Research, explored why research transparency is important and how it plays a key role in building trust with research participants.
Speaking about Make it Public Week, Matt Westmore said: ‘More than ever transparency is key to a thriving health and social care research environment in the UK. Transparency about what research is going on, and what its findings are, is important for patients, service users and the public. It builds trust and accountability, acknowledges their contribution and encourages participation in research.
‘We hope that throughout Make it Public Week the research community will see how making their work more transparent will enable us to develop new and better treatments, at a much fast pace, that will benefit everyone.’
Matt also officially launched and presented the HRA’s second Make it Public annual report on research transparency, reflecting on key achievements from the last year, with a look forward to the priorities for 2023.
What was on during Make it Public Week?
- Monday 20 March: welcome to Make it Public Week webinar hosted by Matt Westmore
- Tuesday 21 March: feeding back to participants workshop
- Wednesday 22 March: publishing summary results of trials workshop
- Thursday 23 March: raising awareness of research opportunities workshop
- Friday 24 March: the future of research transparency panel discussion
Workshops
Over 300 people signed up to be part of practical workshops which focused on three key areas of research transparency:
- feeding back to participants
- publishing summary results of trials
- raising awareness of research opportunities
Attendees had the opportunity to ask questions, share their own successes in ensuring research transparency and worked together to produce a set of ‘top tips’ to support best practice for those in research.
Panel discussion
To conclude Make it Public Week, Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, Chair of the HRA, led an ‘in conversation with…’ panel discussion on Friday 24 March.
The panel revisited and reflected on the key topics of discussion during the week and looked ahead to the future of research transparency.
Sir Terence was joined by:
Andrew Freeman, new non-executive chair of ISRCTN
Circle Steele, CEO of Wai Yin Society
Professor Andrew George, Non-Executive Director, HRA
Dr Caroline Mitchell, GP and Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
This research transparency week has helped us drive progress to make sure that trusted data about health and social care studies is always shared for the benefit of all.