Publication of decision model source code: Attitudes of health economics authors

Date: May 8, 2019
Journal: PharmacoEconomics
Citation: Emerson J, Bacon R, Kent A, Neumann PJ, Cohen JT. Publication of decision model source code: Attitudes of health economics authors. PharmacoEconomics 2019;:1–2.

Dear Editor,

Computer decision models serve as the analytic foundation for most health economic evaluations, the prominence of which continues to grow. Cohen et al. [1], Cohen and Wong [2], and Sampson and Wrightson [3] have argued that authors should publish the decision model ‘source code’, by which we mean the model’s human-readable computer instructions or its underlying component files with formulas in the case of spreadsheet-implemented models. They explained that releasing source code would boost model credibility and allow other researchers to adapt existing computer code to answer similar and related questions, thus increasing the efficiency of health economics. Others (e.g., Padula et al. [4]) have argued against publication of source code, citing intellectual property concerns and the potential for models to be misused to promote misleading claims. We conducted a survey of health economic article authors regarding their willingness to publicly release their model source...

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