Table 2.

Selected practices to improve the quality of research related to surveillance (adapted from Ioannidis 2014 [14]) and their relevance for a slow data public health

Research practices	Relevance for a slow data public health
Large-scale collaborative research	Research and surveillance benefit from coordination of efforts and collaboration in the identification of needs with standardization in data collection methods across different sources
	Critical for comparisons and benchmarking
Adoption of replication culture	To enhance reproducibility, especially under conditions of massive research outputs
	In a quality improvement framework, to provide feedback to surveillance systems for their continuous improvement
Containment of conflicted sponsors and authors	To foster trust in surveillance expertise and evidence
	To protect surveillance activities from political influence
	To avoid academic militantism blurring the boundary between politics and science
More appropriate statistical methods, and standardization of definitions and analyses	Highly relevant as data become more complex and error-prone and as many information producers are involved
	For surveillance, favor methods that are clear enough for dissemination to allow informed decision-making
	Give more weight to metrology training [18]
More stringent thresholds for claiming discoveries or ‘‘successes’’	Essential for efficient dissemination of information and to prevent wasting resources on trivial or biased information
	To prevent exaggerated information, excessive excitement, and eventual disappointment at the time of dissemination
	To enhance trust with proper and honest communication of uncertainty
Improvements in peer review, reporting, and dissemination of research	For surveillance, the processes of reporting and dissemination have to be explicitly defined a priori
	Mediatization of surveillance and study results can create sensationalism and should be done cautiously – to avoid “medicine by press release”
	Requires independent and scientifically credible institutions with experts trained in epidemiology and surveillance methods [24]