BMJ  2004;329:637-638 (18 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7467.637

Editorial

Compulsory registration of clinical trials

Will be a requirement before submission to the BMJ from July 2005

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"The case for registering all clinical trials—first advanced a decade ago¹—is now unanswerable."² Editors of the BMJ and the Lancet made this statement in 1999. Five years of industry resistance, government impotence, and public confusion followed. Medical journals persisted with noble intentions and wise words but were themselves in part resistant, impotent, and confused about how to enforce registration. Some journals, including the BMJ, tried an amnesty for unpublished trials, with little success.³ The BMJ also considered asking for compulsory registration, but it seemed to us that trial registries were too diverse, disorganised, and easily disregarded to insist on registration before submission. Nor did we want fees for registering trials to be a barrier to researchers wanting to publish in the BMJ.

The world has changed. Undisclosed trials and duplicate and selective publication sting government agencies, clinicians, researchers, and journals ever more frequently and painfully. . . . [Full text of this article]

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