MJFF Open Science Policy Handbook

As The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) is a public charity, research enabled by funds from MJFF must be conducted in the public interest. We believe that the results of all MJFF-funded research should be promptly published and broadly disseminated to accelerate innovation and foster collaboration toward our shared goal of new treatments and cures for Parkinson’s disease. To that end, we have adopted an open science policy for all research that is funded, in whole or in part, by the Foundation, including any publications, underlying data sets, and related code (among other research outputs).

This document constitutes the official MJFF Open Science Policy, itemizing all requirement specifications around policy compliance within our three (3) overarching requirements. Each item within an overarching requirement outlines a specific action that a grantee can take to comply with the Policy and lays the foundation for MJFF to have a consistent compliance monitoring and enforcement workflow. 

The overarching goal of MJFF’s Open Science Policy is for scientific findings that stem from MJFF funding to be accessible, verifiable, and for the associated research outputs to be reusable. Practically speaking, this means that someone looking at a figure panel from an MJFF-funded study should be able to identify and reuse the data that underlie that figure and the code used to analyze that data. The lab protocol and key lab materials used to collect those data are encouraged to be openly shared as well.

This MJFF Open Science Policy Guide is a detailed, external resource for grantees. It largely aligns with, and draws from, the Aligning Science Across Parkinson's guide: (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17968591).

To read more about the MJFF Open Science Policy, please visit: https://michaeljfox.org/open-science-integrity

If you have questions about this policy, please contact: openscience@michaeljfox.org.  

The authors would like to extend their gratitude for the input and feedback from MJFF staff and members of the ASAP Open Science team in developing this policy. 

Changes to this version of the policy include:

• Updated the 'Resources for Data' section to point to external guidance, located at: https://www.michaeljfox.org/data-return-guidance.
• Fixed minor typographical errors.