"fiddle": an online search tool to help researchers find the matching outlet for their unpublished data
NeuroCure Value and Open Science Coordinator René Bernard and his colleagues from the QUEST Center have created the online tool fiddle (file drawer data liberation effort). This tool supports researchers in finding the matching outlet for their datasets or manuscripts that are difficult to publish. An article, featuring fiddle was recently published in the journal Clinical Science.
Published research is still the ultimate currency by which most scientists are evaluated. For various reasons, however, researchers often carry along a bag of unpublished research that nobody ever knows about. With every move researchers make throughout their careers, this bag of unpublished results gets larger, leading to a phenomenon known as “file drawer data”. Most researchers view this as a normal and acceptable consequence of doing research. Not every study, no matter how well designed or conducted, yields the expected results or is large enough to be used for drawing definite conclusions. But this internal filtering process can have real-life consequences that often go ignored or underestimated. Today there are more outlets than just the traditional journals Through publication via these outlets researchers receive credit for the work, even peer-review is possible, and the research results are findable for anyone.
The journal article that introduces fiddle also provides access to good quality outlets and the best practices when reporting research results for various study types.