Open science practices for low back pain research: Identifying opportunities and setting priorities

Low back pain is a leading cause of disability in Canada and globally. Almost every Canadian suffers from low back pain at some point in their life. Exercise is a commonly recommended treatment for back pain. Our team is leading international, collaborative work in the ‘exercise for persistent low back pain’ field using a new systematic review approach, called ‘collaborative review’. The collaborative review includes two large projects: a Cochrane review of more than 450 randomized controlled trials and an individual participant data meta-analysis of 20 trials. As we have conducted these two projects, we have experienced challenges and noted opportunities to improve research in the field through better open science practices. Through this planning grant, we will work with researchers from the international low back pain community to identify the most promising open science practices and tools to implement in the field. We will hold three planning activities: 1) a workshop at the International Forum for Back and Neck Pain Research in Primary Care, including a pre-workshop survey and an in-person discussion to identify opportunities, barriers and enablers for open science practices in the field; 2) a half-day expert planning meeting where we will review the findings of the workshop to identify and plan activities to address the three most promising open science practices; and 3) a broad online consultation using electronic survey with the international community to ensure that we have considered open science practice barriers and enablers for underrepresented groups, including people in low and middle income countries. Better open science practices in the back pain field could reduce research waste in evidence synthesis and randomized controlled trials allowing better identification of priority topics for future research. Our team's work in this area will create and share high-quality re-usable data and improve international collaboration.