Dossier Registry · Submit
Anyone can submit. A named person reads it.
You do not need to have taken our course. You do not need a school, a laboratory, a supervisor or an institution. You need one question that public data can answer, and the discipline to say what your answer does not show.
Who this is for
Any student anywhere in the world, from about age 11 upward. You do not need to have taken Open Bench, you do not need a school, a laboratory, an institution or a supervisor, and there is no fee at any stage.
Science fairs are competitive, happen once, and leave nothing behind. Journals will not take a sixteen-year-old. So careful work by students mostly disappears. This registry exists so that it does not: what is published here gets a permanent identifier, a version history, a named reviewer and a citation line, and it stays reachable forever.
Free. There is no submission fee, no publication fee, and no membership. Published work is licensed CC BY 4.0 and keeps your name on it.
The standard
Seven requirements. This is the whole bar, and it is published so you can meet it before you send anything.
01
One question, answerable from public data
Not a topic, a question. “Which targets associated with asthma have no drug?” is a question. “Asthma genetics” is not. If answering it needs a laboratory, it is not a fit for this registry.
02
A named source at a named version
Open Targets 26.09, not “Open Targets”. ChEMBL 34, not “ChEMBL”. Databases change under you, and a result without a version cannot be reproduced by anyone, including you in six months.
03
The exact query or code, published
Whatever produced your numbers: the GraphQL query, the SQL, the notebook. A reader has to be able to paste it and get your table back. This is the requirement most submissions fail.
04
The row-level data attached
Not just the summary. The actual rows your conclusion rests on, so a reviewer can check your arithmetic rather than take it on trust.
05
Findings written as observations
“Fourteen of the twenty had an approved drug” is an observation. “This proves the field is neglecting prevention” is not. Write what you saw; let the reader draw the conclusion.
06
A limitations section, and a real one
Required, and the first thing your reviewer will read. List what your analysis cannot show, where your data is incomplete, and the strongest objection you can think of to your own result. A submission whose limitations section is thin is sent back regardless of how good the analysis is.
07
Nothing claimed that the data does not support
The single most common reason we decline. If your table shows an association, do not write cause. If your join covered one disease, do not write “in general”.
What happens next
Six stages, with the time each one should take.
If we miss one of these windows, write and say so. A venue that does not keep to its own timetable is wasting the time of people who have less of it than we do.
01
Received
Automatic · Immediately
You get an acknowledgement with a tracking reference. If you are under 18, your parent or guardian is written to at the same time and nothing proceeds until they reply.
02
Screen
Any trained screener · Within 14 days
A quick check against the seven requirements above. This is not a judgement of your science, only of whether the submission is complete enough to review. Most work that is sent back is sent back here, with a note saying exactly which requirement is missing.
03
Review
A named reviewer · Within 30 days of passing screen
A medical student, doctoral student, clinician or working scientist re-derives your headline numbers from your own data and query, then reads your limitations against your claims. Their name is published with the dossier.
04
Revision
You · No deadline
You get the review in writing and respond to it. Almost everything that is eventually published goes through at least one revision. Taking your time is fine; the registry is not a competition and there is no closing date.
05
Decision
Reviewer and editor · Within 14 days of your revision
Published, or declined with written reasons. We do not publish work we cannot stand behind, and we do not quietly sit on work either.
06
Published, permanently
— · —
Your dossier gets an identifier, a version number, a permanent URL and a citation line, under CC BY 4.0 with your name on it. Later versions never overwrite earlier ones; the old version stays reachable forever.
What we publish about ourselves
- We publish the number of submissions received, declined, and published, updated as they accumulate. Including the quarters where that number is zero.
- Declines always come with written reasons, and a declined submission may be revised and sent again without limit.
- A reviewer who cannot reproduce your numbers from your own query says so in the published review, and that review is published alongside the dossier if it is accepted.
- No submission is declined for being small, for being simple, or for finding nothing. A careful negative result is a legitimate dossier.
Keeping students safe
- Under 18s may submit, but nothing is published until a parent or guardian has confirmed in writing by replying to us directly.
- You choose how your name appears: in full, first name only, or initials. Surnames are published only where a guardian has agreed to it.
- Reviewers never contact students. Every review goes through the foundation in writing, and reviewers are not given student email addresses.
- Do not send us anything about your own health or anyone else's. A dossier is an analysis of public data, and a submission containing personal health information is deleted rather than returned.
- We ask for no date of birth, no address, no school identifier, no photograph and no payment details, ever.
Submit
Send it when it is ready, not when it is perfect.
Almost everything we publish goes through at least one revision, and there is no deadline and no limit on resubmission. A careful analysis that finds nothing is still a legitimate dossier, and we will say so.
If you want to see what the bar looks like in practice, read OB-D-001. It is the reference submission, and it is deliberately reproducible in an afternoon.