Why participate?

When you participate in E²-RADIatE, you will be given several rights and privileges.

Participating investigators will have the opportunity to be represented in publications, based on certain authorship rules described for E²-RADIatE and relevant cohorts.
This will follow the principle of maximum inclusivity.

The authorship rules are in line with EORTC publication policies and conform to the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors defining the roles of authors and contributors.

The authorship rules are described hereunder:

• The Project lead Principal Investigator is the first author, unless he/she has included no patient. The PI is usually the person who conceived the project, unless otherwise agreed and, consequently, he/she is expected to be the first author. However, the E²-RADIatE Steering Committee has the final say to define and decide on first authorship, should a dispute arise.
• The Cohort Coordinating Committee of a cohort will decide their authorship rule based contribution.
• Participating investigators will be represented on the publication as defined by the Coordinating Committee of the cohort, following the principle of maximum inclusivity of contributors.
• Should authorship be limited in space, the Cohort Coordinating Committee of the cohort will decide at their best
• Non-clinical authors will be appointed as needed. At minimum, the study statistician and those from the coordination office who substantially contributed must be co-authors.
• All publications are made on behalf of the founding bodies (ESTRO and EORTC) and E²-RADIatE.
• Contributors (individuals who could not be listed as authors) and other partners or stakeholders should be both acknowledged and made clearly visible in the main publication.
• Related publications (secondary analysis, etc.) should recognize fair authorship representation of all contributors. Decisions should be discussed at the level of the Steering Committee. In case of emerging conflicts, the E²-RADIatE Steering Committee has the responsibility to take and enforce a fair and neutral decision.

For Cohorts, the following rules will also apply:

First author: Principle Investigator (PI) of a sub-project
Last author: Not pre-defined
Co-authors: as inclusive as possible, but with a dynamic, 2-stepped approach:

• Members of the OligoCare Study group/Consortium are listed on general OligoCare publications. This includes all members of the Coordinating Committee for OligoCare, all members of the three OligoCare Work Packages, and all institutional PIs who enrolled patients (min. 3 patients per year and with complete data set).
• Other authors will be included on a publication related to a specific research question, when the data of patients included by the institution are used for answering that research question.

Participating centres may request benchmarking reports that rank their institution against other (de-identified) institutions. The content will depend on the cohort, but minimally, the treatment characteristics and patient outcomes can be included.

Contributors have a role in helping to make clinical decisions. When the platform contains data from a large number of patients, it will be possible to identify patient subgroups. Analysing outcomes based on treatments for these subgroups can contribute in providing more personalized medicine. This will help the clinician make the right treatment choice for their patient. If clinical decision support tools are developed, these can be made available to data contributors.

We are committed to ensuring that the data generated from this study is put to good use by the cancer research community and, whenever possible, translated to delivering patient benefits. Request for data access by qualified scientific and medical researchers will be possible whilst safeguarding intellectual property, the privacy of patients and confidentiality.
Participating investigators will have priority when requesting data for a scientific project.

By contributing (data) to the platform, contributors can “advertise” their participation and establish themselves as key opinion leaders. For example, contributors will be listed on the E²-RADIatE webpage and centers will receive a paper Certificate of participation in the E2-RADIatE platform. Furthermore, annual awards will be given to top recruiting centers (overall; by country; and academic vs. non-academic).

All data contributors will have the opportunity to meet other participants of the E²-RADIatE platform. They will be able to develop relationships, discuss research ideas and participate in joint research projects. All contributors will have the right to propose new cohorts.