Member Spotlight: Stiftelsen Dam Uses OSF Registries to Promote Open Practices in Health Research

Stiftelsen Dam is a Norwegian funding agency and an OSF Registries member with a unique use case. The agency supports health research through voluntary organizations in Norway, and through their branded DAM Registry they ensure that their funded projects follow guidelines for transparency established by the foundation. All trials and studies funded by Stiftelsen Dam must preregister in the agency’s DAM Registry, and are made publicly visible by the agency according to their own internal criteria.

So what is preregistration, exactly? The open science movement embraces various strategies and tools to improve the transparency and rigor of research. Preregistration is a strategy that improves transparency of the entire research lifecycle by addressing publication bias and selective reporting, which can undermine the credibility of published findings. When researchers utilize preregistration, they specify a research plan before their study is conducted. This can improve the quality of research and can create clearer distinctions between planned outcomes and unexpected discoveries. It follows that preregistration can help calibrate confidence in research outcomes.

The OSF can be accessed freely by researchers to upload their study designs, analysis plans, data, and outcomes as part of a preregistration workflow. Foundations, agencies, or organizations can then curate this data by becoming members and unlocking a unique set of product features as part of OSF Registries. The OSF Registries product allows for organizations like Stiftelsen Dam to create a visible, curated collection of preregistered research like the DAM Registry. With OSF Registries, funders, research organizations, and professional societies can establish scholarly repositories that enable the archiving, sharing, searching, and aggregating of study designs, analysis plans, data, and outcomes.

“We see it as a moral imperative to get the most out of the investments we make. We believe open science practices such as preregistration, user involvement, and data sharing are critical to achieving that,” said Jan-Ole Hesselberg, Chief Program Officer at Stiftelsen Dam.

The OSF Registries infrastructure allows Stiftelsen Dam to control approvals and aggregate research projects in a branded registry, enabling the foundation to support open policy compliance, gather and share research outputs, and cultivate new norms for sharing and collaboration among their research community.

“[OSF Registries] is an infrastructure we could never have established ourselves, and which we believe is absolutely crucial to raising the quality of health research,” said Hesselberg.

Do you face challenges communicating with your funded researchers? Is tracking output, encouraging research transparency, and enforcing policy compliance part of your role? Learn more about OSF Registries.