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We are thrilled that Wellcome Open Research has published 1000 articles!

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our authors for choosing to publish openly and to all the reviewers who have contributed to the platform. In celebration of this milestone, we present the 3 most downloaded articles, which are all hosted in the Covid-19 Collection:

1.

Estimating the overdispersion in COVID-19 transmission using outbreak sizes outside China (4606 downloads)

2.

What settings have been linked to SARS-CoV-2 transmission clusters? (2953 downloads)

3.

COVID-19 – exploring the implications of long-term condition type and extent of multimorbidity on years of life lost: a modelling study (2832 downloads)

Today, we reflect on community, openness and transparency. How these benefit research and society, and how these values enable collaborations and foster interdisciplinary connections to form. Wellcome Open Research has collaborated with some of the largest, world-leading and longitudinal cohort studies, enhancing data access and reuse from ALSPAC, Born in Bradford and Generation Scotland.

We are delighted that all three cohort studies have their own gateways on the platform. A step taken to make their data more accessible to the wider research community, to increase the visibility and to encourage reuse of the rich datasets.

We discuss the gateways and the published research, considering the opportunities that can arise from data reuse, especially when the datasets are found and used by other research groups who can think of new methods or approaches to further the research. 

ALSPAC – a world-leading birth cohort study

Based at the University of Bristol, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), also known as Children of the 90s, is a birth cohort study that charts the lives of 14,500 people. It is the most detailed study of its kind in the world providing the international research community with a rich resource for the study of the environmental and genetic factors that affect a person’s health and development.

In 2018, the ALSPAC gateway was launched on Wellcome Open Research. Professor Nic Timpson, Principal Investigator of ALSPAC, said: “This is an exceptional opportunity for ALSPAC and our valued collaborators to get data, methods and papers out to the wider research community. Our ambition is to build on the reputation of ALSPAC as an accessible resource by using Wellcome Open Research as a portal to data access and the gateway as a forum for showing this and exciting research.”

The gateway now hosts 56 articles. Two of which, a Data Note and a related Research Article, look back at ancestral lines to enhance our understanding of transgenerational effects. We discover that our ancestors not only pass down genes, but their cultural beliefs, attitudes, and environmental exposure could impact future generations.

To investigate non-genetic inheritance, the team led by Jean Golding, University of Bristol, collected information on the childhoods of the ancestors of the ALSPAC cohort, obtaining data from 1128 paternal great-grandfathers and 4122 maternal great grandmothers. “To our knowledge this is the first birth cohort study to have collected information on five generations of the same family,” says Jean Golding.

The data is unique and is the first systematic collection to reveal the frequency of potentially stressful situations experienced by the ancestors. The most common event recorded was exposure to war during childhood, but other traumatic events, such as a parent being seriously ill or dying, being subjected to violence or being taken into care, could have longitudinal consequences on the subsequent generation(s).

“This is a pathbreaking addition to the UK’s collection of birth cohort studies which is likely to stimulate further interest in the mechanisms associated with transgenerational epigenetic inheritance,” says Peter Elias, University of Warwick, who reviewed the article.

It is important to determine whether ancestral exposures have a detectable effect on the outcomes of future generations. This leads onto Jean Golding et al’s Research Article, investigating the transgenerational effects of smoking, specifically how grandparents smoking behaviour affects the IQ of their grandchildren.

The group found an association between grandchildren, especially grandsons, having a lower IQ if their paternal, but not maternal, grandmothers had been smoking prenatally. The authors don’t know the cause of this developmental variation. Further research is required to understand the complexity of the mechanisms at play. For the time being, we can only speculate why one sex is more affected than the other, and how tobacco smoke could modify emerging germlines and alter brain development in future generations.

Born in Bradford – improving the health and wellbeing of families in Bradford and beyond

The Born in Bradford gateway on Wellcome Open Research hosts articles and research findings from the Born in Bradford study. This is a longitudinal multi-ethnic birth cohort study aiming to examine the impact of environmental, psychological and genetic factors on maternal and child health and wellbeing. It is tracking the health and wellbeing of over 13,500 children, and their parents (approximately 36,000 Bradford residents) born at Bradford Royal Infirmary between March 2007 and December 2010.

Due to the richness of the existing data of the Born in Bradford birth cohorts, Rosemary McEachan and Josie Dickerson from Bradford Institute for Health Research, along with their co-authors are studying the impact of the restrictions imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19 on health inequalities among families living in Bradford, a city with high numbers of vulnerable, deprived multi-ethnic families.

In their Study Protocol, they set out their plans to address a range of research questions over the short term (6 months), medium term (6-12 months) and longer term (12 months onwards). “Lived experiences and in-depth qualitative research will be key to knowing how best to help those who are most affected and most in need”, explain McEachan and Dickerson. Trust and genuine partnerships between researchers, communities and decision-makers are needed to improve the health and wellbeing of vulnerable populations, and to understand how communities will respond when faced with new policy interventions. “We have spent many years in Bradford developing these close relationships and can now use our ‘City of Research’ infrastructure to help inform local and national recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“In the longer term this will allow a better understanding of the wider societal impacts of the COVID-19 response on health trajectories and inequalities. The adaptive longitudinal mixed methods design will allow an agile response to COVID-19 developments and community and stakeholder priorities,” commented peer reviewer, Michelle McKinley, Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland.

Melissa Wake, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia, also commended the authors and the study, stating in her peer review report: “The mixed methods and city-wide collaboration will provide a richness, breadth and depth not otherwise achievable.”

Generation Scotland – A rich resource for genetic and health related research

The Generation Scotland gateway launched in 2019. David Porteous, Principle Investigator for Generation Scotland, and an advisor for gateway, shared why the gateway was created: “Useful research does not always find an easy and accessible home in specialist journals, yet can be of real value to others in scoping and planning their research.”

Generation Scotland is a population and family-based study of the genetic and environmental determinants of health. The core group of 24,000 adults in 7,000 family groups were recruited between 2006-2011. These participants answered 400 questions about their health and wellbeing, which were combined with their NHS health records. 150 clinically relevant measures were made, along with donated samples of blood and urine, to understand health trajectories.

This dynamic and longitudinal study cohort has supported research on Covid-19, cancer, mental health and methylation. It has also supported researchers in other ways, as can be seen in this Research Article by Iona Beange from University of Edinburgh and co-authors, who organised a public engagement event to explore public attitudes to the use of health data in research and topics, such as the linking together of electronic health and administrative records. The event was attended by 250 individuals, including cohort members and their guests. The guests’ participation was important to test whether the individuals who had participated in research differed in their attitudes compared to those who had not.

Using a simple voting pad system, they found that both research participants and their guests are broadly supportive of research access to the data and samples. Although cohort participants showed higher trust in researchers and doctors than guest participants. Both groups were less supportive when commercial interests are involved.

To close, we recommend reading our analysis of 2020. It is a nice summary of publishing activity on the Wellcome Open Research platform, including high profile and impactful papers related to the Covid-19 pandemic and highlights of the data sharing campaign by our Early Career Research Advisory Board to help early career researchers shift towards open research practices.

Do keep an eye on @WellcomeOpenRes twitter account as we’ll be showcasing more articles and gateways, shining a light on interdisciplinary collaborations and open data resources available on Wellcome Open Research.