Universities and umbrella organizations promote ARRIVE guideline
6 years agoResearchers who follow the ARRIVE guidelines when publishing animal research results are helping to improve the exchange of knowledge about animal experiments while working on the 3 R’s (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement). Recently, several umbrella organisations sent a joint letter to a number of relevant publishers requesting that they only publish articles that meet these guidelines. This group of Dutch health foundations, known as the SGF, recommends that member organisations incorporate the ARRIVE guidelines in their research conditions.
ARRIVE is an abbreviation for Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments. Their goal is to improve the quality of published results of experiments on animals, making it possible to evaluate and analyse the results better, so that the research can be reproduced by others if necessary. Better quality means better sharing and distribution of knowledge.
Guiding principle for publications
Both Utrecht University and the UMC Utrecht are encouraging the use of the guidelines, which they feel must be a guiding principle in all publications of results of animal experiments. They are bringing the guidelines to the attention of researchers through the Animal Welfare Body (AWB) Utrecht. The AWB will inform researchers about the guidelines through their internal newsletter, courses, the website and a pocket-sized guide.
NC3Rs
The guidelines were drawn up in 2010 by the NC3Rs in cooperation with scientists, statisticians and journal editors. Although most journal editorial boards recognise the guidelines, they do not insist that authors use them. The organisations feel that it’s time to change this situation, and thus their letter is a call to do something about it. The SGF has incorporated its recommendations on implementing the ARRIVE guidelines in its policy standpoint on animal experiments.
The signatories of the letter are:
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences– KNAW
Association of Universities in the Netherlands – VSNU
Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres – NFU