User information

These VetCompass™ data are made available to assist interested readers of the original papers to delve deeper into some of the results provided, and to enhance academic rigour and reproducibility by enabling external scrutiny and also to provide learning resources for students. As an academic research programme, VetCompass is also very keen to share open access data that may be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students to explore and analyse as a learning resource.

It should be noted, though, that the open access data generally represent just a subsection of the complete original study data. VetCompass contributors are able to share these sections of data openly in accordance with current ethical considerations and data protection regulations. Fields with sensitive, confidential or identifying information from the original full datasets have been redacted. Datasets may also hold curtailed lists of study animals.

Safe inferences derived from the full, unredacted datasets are summarised in the accompanying peer-reviewed publication. VetCompass emphasises that full understanding of the provenance and context of any dataset is an essential component for safe interpretation. Such understanding by the original researchers will have been critical for the validity of the peer-reviewed publication. Further inference without this core contextual understanding and without access to the full dataset should be regarded as incomplete and provisional at best.

These Open Access data are provided:

  • Purely for validation and learning exercise purposes
  • With no ethical permissions for use in further formal research
  • With no warranty or assurances for completeness or veracity
  • With no background information on the context beyond that which is described in the originating publication
  • With no additional support offered by the original researchers or authors
  • With no responsibility of any kind accepted by The Royal Veterinary College or VetCompass on any matters arising from the access, sharing, analysis or outcomes of usage of these data in any way.

The data behind the following studies is available open access.

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