CALL for Submissions: SPECIAL ISSUE ON CLINICAL DATA SHARING - JSCDM

Guest editors: 

Catherine K. Craven, PhD, MLS, MA, FAMIA - University of Texas Health San Antonio

Brian Jackson, MD, MS - University of Utah

Tony Solomonides, PhD, MSc, FAMIA - NorthShore University HealthSystem

The Journal of the Society for Clinical Data Management (JSCDM) is a young, open access journal representing the next step in SCDM’s work to promote the translation of new data innovations into practice, demonstrating our commitment to advance the CDM profession worldwide and the work of those who depend on it. JSCDM is a scholarly, peer-reviewed, online and open access journal with no fees for authors.

“The expanded scope of the publication will help fill a gap in the biomedical literature by publishing articles with an applied focus toward data collection, management and use in the design, conduct and reporting of and sharing resources from clinical studies.” 
– Meredith Zozus (JSCDM Editor-in-Chief).

JSCDM announces a call for a special issue on clinical data sharing. The main focus: issues of all types surrounding the sharing of data from electronic health record systems (EHRs) for secondary uses. However, additional types of data sharing and contexts with relevance for researchers and data professionals will be considered.

Submission due date extended: December 15, 2022

Link for submission: https://www.jscdm.org/submissions/

Link for guidelines: https://www.jscdm.org/site/ms-preparation/

Data sharing is a major concern because:

• People at large have a poor understanding of what it is or even that it is happening, although many understand that it could be beneficial, if done ethically;
• This touches patients, healthcare researchers, and decision-makers within healthcare organizations of every type, from large academic medical institutions to small group practices.
• Misunderstanding the value of data is a threat to Informatics as a scientific discipline; data is not something to be “thrown over the fence,” as if it is transparent and all that is needed is a technological infrastructure to hold it–when, “it’s just an IT problem now.”
• There are broad and deep implications for privacy–from dangers in insecure sharing to inappropriate exploitation for marketing and persuasion.
• Protective “deidentification” technologies have been shown to be vulnerable.
• The volume of “hype” surrounding clinical and patient-generated data drowns out the important questions about their potential for good and harm.
• Pharmaceutical and medical device companies express urgent needs to access ever larger healthcare data sets, “Real World Data,” to process using “big data” computational methods for innovation in drug and device development; large sums are paid for these data, but patients and their communities often see little benefit.
• The NIH is explicitly asking academic medical centers to prepare for increased data sharing (e.g., in the current Clinical and Translational Science Award funding opportunity) and signaling that a goal is big data sharing through some of its very large programs, including All of Us, and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) as a template for broader data-sharing infrastructure 

JSCDM considers the following types of articles. 

• Original research 
• Review articles
• Design manuscripts
• Education and professional development articles 
• Consensus papers
• Opinion papers*
• Letters to the Editor*

Both academic scholarly contributions and papers on more technical or operational nature are welcome.

JSCDM’s mission is to promote and publish scholarly work with direct relevance to the practice of Informatics and Data Science in clinical research. It welcomes both applied and foundational submissions. JSCDM fills a gap in the biomedical literature by publishing the science and operations behind data collection and use in clinical studies. The primary audience for JSCDM is the large community of professionals in industry and academe collecting, managing and using data in clinical studies. We encourage both those who are experienced authors and those newer to publishing to submit; our editorial board and reviewers will happily provide guidance as needed for those gaining experience. JSCDM complies with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations to ensure rigorously produced content for readers.