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In early 2016, the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (MNI) took the first step on a grand journey by announcing its intention to become the world’s first open science institute, with the recently established Tanenbaum Open Science Institute helping the MNI implement its vision. This seismic move involves creating more capacity in clinical trials, adapting their IT infrastructure to support open science, and building an open drug discovery platform and repository for securely sharing relevant research and clinical data. In mid-2016, we at F1000 set off on our own journey with Wellcome in announcing the first open research platform – Wellcome Open Research.

More than a year later it only makes sense that our paths would cross based on our shared belief that how research is performed and reported needs to change. Today, I am delighted to announce that we will continue this journey as fellow travellers and will be launching MNI Open Research in partnership with MNI.

This partnership makes complete sense when you look at our shared views on open science. MNI’s journey to become an open science institute is guided by five principles.  The first of which is: “Share scientific data and resources,” this includes positive and negative data, software and data sources –  MNI Open Research will support this principle perfectly. It will publish all research results regardless of outcome or perceived impact, it will also publish Software Tool Articles and Data Notes.

MNI Open Research will also support the other four principles: open external research partnerships, sharing research participants’ contributions while protecting their rights, not filing patents, and respecting academic autonomy. MNI’s partnership with F1000 will ensure that research participants will be able to freely view the results and data of the studies they have participated in while protecting their privacy. All articles published on MNI Open Research will be published under the CC BY 4.0 license ensuring maximum reuse by others. Although MNI researchers will be encouraged to publish on MNI Open Research, it will not be mandatory, thereby meeting the fifth and final principle.

The MNI states that its objective on this journey to becoming an open science institute is to expand the impact of its research and accelerate the discovery of ground-breaking therapies. MNI Open Research will help achieve this objective as the immediate publication model means that information key to treating neurological diseases will reach the research and clinical communities sooner than before.

The transparent invited post-publication peer review model that will be used on MNI Open Research will put their authors at the centre of the process. At F1000, we believe that authors are often best placed to judge who has the best expertise to be invited (within strict criteria) to peer review their article, given that the full openness of the peer review model means everyone can see who has refereed and exactly what they say. This is something we have found that works well on F1000Research and  Wellcome Open Research as well.

In the press release about this announcement, Director of the MNI, Guy Rouleau says: “By creating MNI Open Research, The Neuro is maximizing the positive impact our work can have on patient outcomes, and helping set an example for other organizations that open science is the way of the future.” The MNI has already shown true leadership in its approach to open science and we hope that that MNI Open Research will play a big part in this.

This is my fourth blog post announcing a new open research platform, I always end with “watch this space”, this continues to be true, we have more news to follow so do stay tuned. For MNI researchers or those interested in MNI Open Research you can sign up for updates here. You can also ready a guest blog from the MNI’s Director, Guy Rouleau, here.