In 2016, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation funded a clinical trial investigating the efficacy of a focused ultrasound treatment for Essential Tremor (ET) which yielded transformative findings. The trial demonstrated that focused ultrasound could very effectively treat ET with little to no side effects, a very significant improvement on previous treatment outcomes. To publish this groundbreaking research, however, the researcher unfortunately had to abide by a nine-month publication embargo which delayed FDA approval of the treatment and thus life changing treatments for many patients suffering with the debilitating disease. This flashpoint event became a call to action in the focused ultrasound community to improve openness in publication practices and shift values: science and the patients had to come before individualistic journal concerns.
In response to this, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation (FUSF) determined that the community needed a platform where researchers could share their research outputs quickly and openly prior to jumping through the many hoops of the publication process. This aim came to fruition in a partnership with the Center for Open Science (COS) to create an open preprint archive for focused ultrasound research, the FocUS Archive. The FocUS Archive is built on the OSF Preprints infrastructure, a system which enables research communities, like that of focused ultrasound, to deposit and share findings and easily collaborate on research.
Launched in 2017, the FocUS Archive is now a critical hub of preprint activity in the focused ultrasound community – by providing a place for researchers to easily and quickly post their research findings the server is accelerating the dissemination of advances, outputs, and evidence across the focused ultrasound community. Furthermore, this increased availability of research in preprint form not only broadens access to knowledge and data – it also provides focused ultrasound stakeholders with a wealth of public testimonials to the efficacy of the technology that they can leverage to accelerate its further development and adoption.
In addition to the FocUS Archive, FUSF has also launched an Open Science policy initiative and created an OSF-hosted data repository (https://osf.io/collections/fusf/discover). Both projects make significant use of COS resources, and the Foundation continues to work with COS on developing data sharing, open access scholarly communications, and research practice standards policies.
“COS has been instrumental in our efforts to further open science in the focused ultrasound community. Both through their hosting of our preprint server and data repository and through the use of resources such as their TOP guidelines, COS has proved invaluable to our internal and external initiatives to push transparency and accessibility in our research community.”
- Charlie Manning, Open Science Manager
About COS
The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit technology and culture change organization founded in 2013 with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The OSF is a web application that provides a solution for the challenges facing researchers who want to pursue open science practices, including: a streamlined ability to manage their work; collaborate with others; discover and be discovered; preregister their studies; and make their code, materials, and data openly accessible. Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.
About the Focused Ultrasound Foundation
The Focused Ultrasound Foundation was created to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide by accelerating the development of this noninvasive technology. The Foundation works to clear the path to global adoption by organizing and funding research, fostering collaboration, and building awareness among patients and professionals. Since its establishment in 2006, the Foundation has become the largest nongovernmental source of funding for focused ultrasound research. For more information, visit http://www.fusfoundation.org.
