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We announce a new partnership with NC3Rs to launch a gateway that will maximise the impact of the 3Rs technologies and approaches in animal research. In this guest blog, Vicky Robinson, Chief Executive of NC3Rs, introduces the NC3Rs Gateway.

Funding first class 3Rs -Replacement, Reduction and Refinement – animal research is at the heart of the NC3Rs strategy. Over the years, since the Centre was launched in 2004, we have funded some stellar science that has delivered major 3Rs impacts as well as providing findings that contribute to the knowledge base and have the potential to improve human health.

One of my greatest pleasures is hearing the buzz around a funding panel when they start discussing a grant application that ticks every box – great well-articulated 3Rs impacts, strong dissemination plan, robust underpinning science and a properly thought through experimental design. These are ultimately the pieces of work that should have a disruptive impact on animal use. But is that always the case in practice?

Scientists are often unaware of the new models that are available to replace, reduce or refine their animal use, or how they might be integrated into their research programmes.

It shouldn’t be a surprise because it effects most areas of science, but the 3Rs also suffers from its own translational “valley of death”, that is the gap between the development of innovative 3Rs models, tools and approaches and their uptake into common practice. There are many reasons for this gap but one of the major ones is the paucity of information on the 3Rs in the published literature which means that scientists are often unaware of the new models that are available to replace, reduce or refine their animal use, or how they might be integrated into their research programmes.

That is not to say that NC3Rs-funded researchers don’t have great publications. The problem is, it is not unusual for me to read a paper that cites the NC3Rs as a funder, only to find that it either includes no explicit reference to the 3Rs, insufficient relevance to the 3Rs or little mention of how the research fits within the context of the 3Rs. I should say that this has been an endless source of frustration not least because it is a missed opportunity for us as a funder and the many potential end-users of the outputs of the NC3Rs, as well as our grant holders as it prevents the full impact of their work being realised.

Whilst often lacking 3Rs information, the papers do describe important scientific findings using the models whose development we have funded. This of course ultimately helps to build confidence in new models and in time should help foster wider uptake. But it is only part of the story. Without detailed information on the model development including technical details, its performance characteristics and limitations and its 3Rs impact, the valley of death will remain a major obstacle for much of the work we fund.

As a publicly-funded organisation we have a responsibility to ensure that the outputs of work we fund are in the public domain

Dialogue with our grant holders is an essential activity for us and we have regular meetings with them to provide support wherever we can. One topic that often comes up is the difficulty of getting 3Rs impacts published, and how this can be due to apparent space limitation or journal editors and reviewers asking for the information to be deleted from manuscripts.

As a publicly-funded organisation we have a responsibility to ensure that the outputs of work we fund are in the public domain in a format that means they can be accessed and used by others, including scientists, other research funders, regulators and ethics committees. The innovative publishing platform created by F1000Research, also used by the likes of Wellcome and the Gates Foundation, provides an ideal solution for us and we are delighted to be working with the brilliant team there to launch the NC3Rs Gateway. The gateway, which will provide open access to articles that undergo invited peer review after publication, will ensure that we are transparent about what our research investment delivers and importantly will add to our armoury for tackling the 3Rs valley of death.

What will the gateway mean for NC3Rs-funded researchers? It will be a new opportunity to showcase their 3Rs research in a way that will maximise its use and uptake by others. It won’t preclude them publishing scientific finding elsewhere, in fact, the gateway will be complementary to the more traditional publishing routes.

We are launching the gateway with four articles and an editorial that cover the diversity of science we support from clever stuff using the fruit fly to hard core computational modelling. There is a pipeline of articles in preparation so lots of exciting science to come and hopefully an end to the frustration of not having the full impacts of NC3Rs funding available to all.