This document discusses the OECD's process for reviewing and endorsing Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) and opportunities for cooperation with scientific journals. The OECD aims to increase the rate of AOP scientific reviews by distributing the review burden across organizations through Memorandums of Understanding with journals. Reviews conducted by journals would follow OECD principles of independence, transparency, and expertise. AOPs accepted by journals could then be considered for OECD endorsement and publication. The goal is to incentivize high quality AOP development and provide recognition to authors through multi-level publication in the AOP wiki, OECD documents, and scientific journals.

1. OECD AOP REVIEW AND ENDORSEMENT
PROCESS AND TOOLS FOR
COOPERATION WITH SCIENTIFIC
JOURNALS
Nathalie Delrue (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD)
Webinar on Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOPs) co-operative activities between
Scientific journals and the OECD
Tuesday 25 January 2022

2. • « Engagement with publishers is key
for a closer relationship to be forged
between scientists and decision-
makers across disciplines, domains,
and sectors. »
• Why is it pivotal for the AOP
Development Programme?
Premise

3. How can OECD help?
• The OECD AOP Development Programme
is one of these tools
• Based on multi-stakeholders cooperation
• Work on solutions addressing challenges
• The objectives of the OECD Chemical Safety programme
o Develop standards and IT tools
o Promote best practices across member countries to facilitate data
sharing, knowledge management, and to avoid duplication of resources
in chemicals management

4. Detailed description of the AOP development process

5. • Why is it important?
– The widespread acceptance of AOPs depends on the confidence placed in
the quality of the AOPs
A review process that evaluates the technical quality of AOPs is a key
element in the system
• Why is it challenging?
– The OECD coordinated scientific reviews depend on funding and staff
time to organise ad hoc reviews
– Scientific review cannot be guaranteed for all AOPs in the workplan
 Identified as one bottleneck of the AOP development process
 Looking for support from other stakeholders, i.e. national
institutes, scientific journals
The scientific review: importance and challenges

6. • Objective: Maintain the development of high quality AOPs
– Standardise the way in which AOPs are developed and reviewed
– Retain flexibility to ensure efficiency
 Development of a Guidance Document on the scientific
review of AOPs, published in September 2021:
– provides guidance on the quality standards required for the scientific
review of an AOP on the AOP-Wiki.
– defines the core principles associated with AOP scientific review in
order to enable consistent scientific reviews to be conducted
regardless of who is doing the review
The OECD principles of the scientific review

7. • Independence : Avoid conflicts of interest
• Transparence
– Transparent selection of reviewers through diverse recruitment channels
– Public disclosure (e.g. on AOP-Wiki) of the names of the reviewers, the collective
outcome of their individual declaration of interest analysis, their comments and
the responses of the AOP authors to the reviewers’ comments
• The collective scientific expertise of the Review panel should cover
the full scope of the AOP (e.g. technical, biological, toxicological
aspects)
• The scientific review should address a standard set of pre-defined
charge questions
AOP review principles

8. • OECD / Journal cooperation on AOP Development Programme
 Journal will participate in managing the scientific
review of some AOPs of relevance to its field of expertise
• Common objective:
o Increase the rate of AOP scientific reviews by distributing the burden
of organising and managing those reviews across a broader range of
organisations;
o Incentivise more AOP contributions by providing authors with the
career recognition associated with a peer-reviewed publication;
o Benefit participating journals by providing “review-like” articles with
high citation potential.
Objectives of the Memorandum of Understanding

9. The virtuous circle
of collaboration

10. • The Journal signing the MOU would:
– carry out the scientific review of the AOP in the AOP-Wiki
– in accordance with the OECD GD for the scientific review
of AOPs
• If the Journal requires AOP authors to develop a Journal
Format Article (AOP Report), both:
– the AOP-Wiki content and
– the AOP Report
The principles of the MOU
will be reviewed by the Journal
peer reviewers

11. • Acceptance of a Journal article without review of corresponding
content in the AOP-Wiki is not sufficient to make an AOP eligible
for consideration for endorsement by OECD working parties
Post review steps – Acceptance / Endorsement
AOPs accepted by the Journal…
if - AOP-Wiki content reviewed
- OECD review principles followed
…can be considered for
OECD endorsement and
subsequent OECD publication

12. • The Journal will publish the AOP reviewed through the AOP
Report.
• The OECD will publish the AOP as described in the AOP-Wiki
at the end of the OECD endorsement process in the form of
an OECD working paper in the AOP Series.
Post review steps - Publication

13. • Publication in the AOP-Wiki: Recognition from the AOP
community
• Publication in the OECD i-Library Series on AOPs:
Recognition from OECD community – Regulatory
applications
• Publication in an impact factor journal: recognition from the
Research community
Benefits of multi support publication

14. • Before entering the AOP review process, the Journal will
ensure that the AOP under consideration is compliant
with the AOP-Wiki development principles
– Compliance check conducted by coaches for AOP in OECD
workplan
– Compliance check conducted by journal editors for other
AOPs
Pre-review steps

15. • MOU summary containing essential information publicly
available
• Development of training material :
– Training video for AOP reviewers of the AOP-Wiki content (not
journal specific)
– Training video for journal editors on how to apply the
Compliance check
Additional Tools for cooperation

16. ET&C and EMM have signed a MOU with OECD
More scientific journals are invited to join!
• Wish to know more about the AOP Development Programme or to discuss further
cooperation on AOPs with the OECD?
Contact Nathalie Delrue or Magda Sachana: nathalie.delrue@oecd.org,
magdalini.sachana@oecd.org
• Visit our website:
– OECD public website on Adverse Outcome Pathways: http://oe.cd/aops
– AOP-Wiki platform: https://aopkb.org/aopwiki

17. Coming up Next….
Case study and lessons learnt from
ET&C and EMM