# Scoop protection and co-publication norms to reduce academic secrecy

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-scoop-protection-policy/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-scoop-protection-policy` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Scientists hide results for fear of being beaten to publication. If journals and funders guaranteed that a preprinted finding cannot be scooped, and encouraged rival groups to publish side by side, sharing would become safe.

## Summary

Journals in the cancer field adopt explicit scoop-protection policies (a preprint or registered report establishes priority and a competing paper appearing during review does not affect acceptance, as PLOS and eLife have done) and funders count preprints as outputs. Add a co-publication mechanism in which groups working on the same question are matched and encouraged to publish back-to-back with cross-replication, which the field treats as a strength. Secrecy delays diffusion and, by preventing early cross-checking, contributes to irreproducible claims reaching translation.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: In the two years after major oncology journals adopt scoop protection, the share of cancer biology papers preprinted before submission rises by at least half and surveys show a measurable fall in reported withholding of methods and data before publication.
- Rationale: Preprinting rates rose sharply in fields where journals signalled acceptance and protection (genomics, neuroscience); the pandemic showed biomedical researchers will share early when norms permit. Back-to-back publication of independent confirmations is already a respected format in structural biology and genetics.
- Proposed test: Track preprint rates and survey-reported withholding in oncology before and after policy adoption by a coalition of journals and funders, compared with a field without the change.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: research

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration): Danchev et al., Evaluation of data sharing after implementation of the ICMJE data sharing statement requirement (JAMA Netw Open 2021): https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.33972

## Connected records

- ideas: [Funder bonuses for releasing results and data within six months, negatives included](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-open-results-bonus/), [Promote academics for trials completed, data shared and findings replicated](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-academic-promotion-reform/)
- bottlenecks: [Knowledge reaches practice too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-knowledge-diffusion/), [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/), [Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/)
- key papers: [Evaluation of Data Sharing After Implementation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Data Sharing Statement Requirement](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-danchev-jama-netw-open/)

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