Reproductive Health is pleased to announce a mandatory open data policy in the journal

The field of global health is evolving and moving forward from not just securing open access publication to aid in the dissemination of research but further still, making the data underpinning the results of that publication open. Funders1 in the field, and recently the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [1], are increasingly requiring that researchers make data produced during their grants publicly accessible.Although the push for more data sharing and transparency started with the genomics community, it is quickly spreading to the global health communities. Indeed, two major organisations in the field have already set up a strong infrastructure for data reuse and sharing. Many of us are already familiar with the power of open data through the WHO Global Health Observatory Data Repository [2] and the World Bank Open Data Catalogue [3], both of which are invaluable resources. In February 2016 the Wellcome Trust also joined ‘over 30 global health bodies in calling for all research data gathered during the Zika virus outbreak, and future public health emergencies, to be made available as rapidly and openly as possible’ [4]. This follows a consensus statement arising from a WHO consultation in September 2015 moving towards making this the global norm [5].Reproductive Health wants to help spearhead this paradigm shift to ensure all data underlying the research published within the journal is publicly available to ensure transparency of research and contribute to enhancing research in the field.