Editorial: Joining efforts to improve data quality and harmonization among European population-based cancer registries

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The aim of population-based cancer registries (PBCRs) is to collect information from all new cases of cancer that occur in a defined population (1). They play an essential role in cancer surveillance, quantifying the burden of cancer in terms of incidence, prevalence and survival at population level, describing geographical variation and time trends. In addition, PBCRs are an important information source for planning and evaluating cancer control policies and healthcare systems (2, 3).The reliability, use and comparability of the data provided by PBCRs depend on their quality as well as the harmonization of data collection and processing, coding and case definition.The aim of this Research Topic was to share experiences on cancer data quality and harmonization in Europe, focusing on: 1) challenges in data comparability among PBCRs; 2) description of tools and activities for improving cancer data quality and harmonization; 3) Assessment of data quality in PBCRs; 4) challenges in data quality and harmonization related to national data protection regulations; 5) impact of data quality and harmonization on cancer indicators; and 6) epidemiological and statistical methods for improving data comparability.