Our vision for research transparency is that trusted information from health and social care research studies is publicly available for the benefit of all.
We made 10 commitments in our Make it Public Strategy, to make transparency easy, make transparency the norm and make information public.
Make transparency easy
| 1 | being clear about what we expect of sponsors and researchers and what they can expect of us |
| 2 | supporting good practice through guidance, learning and clear communication |
| 3 | having a high-quality, interconnected research approvals system |
| 4 | reminding researchers and sponsors when reporting is due |
Make transparency the norm
| 5 | working with research funding bodies, other regulators and publishers to make sure that expectations around research transparency are consistent and aligned |
| 6 | rewarding and celebrating good practice and highlighting poor performance |
| 7 | taking action where researchers and sponsors do not fulfil their research transparency responsibilities |
Make information public
| 8 | ensuring that all clinical trials taking place in the UK are registered, unless the sponsor has permission to delay this to a later stage |
| 9 | publishing or sharing accessible information about individual studies and their findings |
| 10 | working with partners to ensure that information for the public is easy to understand |
The 10 commitments are designed to be there for the long term and will take ongoing work to make change happen. When we launched them in 2020, we outlined a number of initial actions that we planned to take in an implementation plan. This includes updates showing which are now complete and where we have further work to do.
We are now focusing our efforts on three of the original commitments:
- ensuring that all clinical trials taking place in the UK are registered, unless the sponsor has permission to delay this to a later stage (commitment 8)
- rewarding and celebrating good practice and highlighting poor performance (commitment 6)
- Taking action where researchers and sponsors do not fulfil their research transparency responsibilities (commitment 7)
You can see what we are doing this year in our Business Plan for 2023-24, to make transparency the norm for research:
| Progress Measure measurement | Month | |
| Develop a long-term roadmap to make information about research studies public through registries and on the HRA website. | Publish the long-term roadmap. | Dec 23 |
| Write and publish guidance to support transparency of clinical trials of medicines. | Delivered in time to support the implementation clinical trial regulations. | Dec 23 |
| Develop ways to assess how well researchers are making their research public and to act where they are not. | Publish a Make It Public annual report with information on research transparency performance and examples of best practice. | Dec 23 |
| Publish and promote the actions we will take when sponsors do not meet research transparency expectations. | Dec 23 | |
| Update the UK Policy Framework to reflect any changes to the law governing clinical trials of medicines. | Updated UK Policy Framework published. | Mar 24 |