From its earliest days, The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) has worked to transform Parkinson’s research by breaking down silos and bringing scientists together around a shared mission. Building on this foundation, MJFF is now broadening our longstanding commitment to open science, bringing it to the forefront of our grantmaking efforts.
Open science is an approach to research that prioritizes transparency, collaboration, and broad, equitable access to scientific knowledge and data. Through the introduction of a revised open science policy and expanded staff focus, MJFF is aligning with other research funders to adopt new approaches and technologies that strengthen research integrity, build community trust, accelerate discovery and maximize the impact of every research dollar invested.
Since its earliest days, MJFF convened grantees to share findings directly with one another, invested in the development of tools and data resources for the broader research community, and required the publication of results in open access journals. As new mechanisms for sharing became more widely available, MJFF has evolved its policies to incorporate these advances.
“For years, MJFF has worked to foster collaboration in Parkinson’s research,” said Brian Fiske, PhD, chief scientist at MJFF. “This updated open science policy builds on that legacy by embedding transparency, early sharing and reproducibility more explicitly into our funding model. Our goal is to make openness the default, because that is what strengthens rigor and ultimately help advance the science.”
What is Open Science?
Open science is a set of principles aimed at making research as transparent as possible, while remaining mindful of the privacy and rights of those who participate in it. Open access to research outputs is a key part of this approach. Research funders, such as MJFF, and practitioners of open science believe sharing information, and sharing it early, helps advance research progress.
Open science practices include making research outputs such as scientific articles, preprints (early versions of research papers shared publicly before formal peer review), data, code, research plans, and materials widely and openly available. In this context, “open” means that these resources are easily findable and freely available to other researchers at no cost. Open science also encompasses the collaborative structures that make meaningful sharing possible, including convening researchers, supporting cross-institutional consortia and fostering ongoing dialogue across disciplines. By strengthening these connections, openness becomes not just about access to information, but about accelerating discovery through coordinated, community-driven effort.
“Open access lowers barriers to participation in Parkinson’s research,” says Dr. Fiske. “When findings and resources are freely available, investigators across institutions, geographies and career stages can contribute meaningfully to the field. Our aim is to fund the best research, and openness ensures more of the best researchers make their way to PD and MJFF.”
How is MJFF’s Open Science Policy Changing?
MJFF has long required that outputs resulting from our grants — including publications and data generated through flagship efforts like the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) longitudinal study — be shared under open access licenses and set general expectations around sharing preprints, published articles and data. The updated policies keep, and in some cases strengthen, those requirements, while offering clearer guidance and more specific direction to help grantees understand and meet them.
By updating the open science policies guiding grants, MJFF is doubling down on our commitment to transparency, collaboration and acceleration of scientific discovery through the broad sharing of research outputs.
The updated guidance requires researchers to share results by posting preprints and placing their data and code in public repositories. It also provides clearer guidance on open science practices, such as licensing, to support reproducibility and make it easier for researchers to build on each other’s work.
In addition, to align with fieldwide best practices, MJFF is requiring researchers to add persistent identifiers (PIDs) — permanent digital IDs that make it easy to reliably identify and track research outputs over time — to a broader range of research outputs. Increased use of PIDs will allow researchers and the public to better track these outputs (such as preprints, journal articles, datasets or code), while also ensuring that their creators are properly credited for their research contributions.
Beyond these newly clarified requirements, MJFF is encouraging researchers to adopt open science behaviors designed to make science more transparent and reliable. These include preregistering research plans (so scientists clearly lay out what they plan to study in advance), sharing detailed protocols to help other researchers reproduce results, and providing access to materials (such as tools or reagents) to help speed up experiments. Together, these approaches will help MJFF and the broader research community better test and evaluate the usefulness of new research practices and how well they work.
MJFF believes that this new policy creates an exciting opportunity to help educate (and expand) its community of researchers. To support adoption of these policies, MJFF will provide ongoing training to grantees, helping them understand both the guidance and the broader value of open science practices.
Through its open science policies, MJFF aims to help researchers advance their work more rapidly and efficiently, accelerating research that improves the lived experience of people with Parkinson’s and better serves patient needs.
“Ultimately,” Dr. Fiske concluded, “open science shortens the distance between discovery and therapeutic development. When data and findings are shared early, freely and in easy-to-use formats, researchers can build on them more quickly, accelerating scientific progress. The Parkinson’s community deserves that level of openness, so that they can trust in and feel encouraged by the work that we are doing on their behalf.”
Learn more about MJFF’s open science policy at: https://www.michaeljfox.org/open-science-integrity.
For questions about MJFF’s open science policy, please contact: openscience@michaeljfox.org.