One of the salient lessons learned during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the importance of data sharing. As the disease spread and the world mobilised to understand the virus and find medical countermeasures and other disease control interventions, much valuable knowledge was lost or action delayed because data was not shared in a timely and open manner.For that reason, the WHO R&D Blueprint team convened a meeting in September 2015 on this very topic and invited scientific journal representatives to give their views alongside those of scientists, public health experts, industry, NGOs, science foundations and government experts.