Competing interests: I have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that the Yale Open Data Access Project (YODA) paid all expenses for me to join a June 2012 planning meeting to discuss YODA’s forthcoming data sharing policy. This payment was later reimbursed by The BMJ. I consider the YODA team to be colleagues. Also, I am an unpaid member of the IMEDS steering committee at the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, which focuses on drug safety research. Vinay Prasad, quoted in this article, and I are co-recipients of a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to establish a RIAT Support Center. Also see http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/editorial-staff/peter-doshi.