Trials (journal)
Encyclopedia
Trials is an open access, peer review
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

ed online journal regarding performance and outcomes of randomized controlled trial
Randomized controlled trial
A randomized controlled trial is a type of scientific experiment - a form of clinical trial - most commonly used in testing the safety and efficacy or effectiveness of healthcare services or health technologies A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a type of scientific experiment - a form of...

s. The journal is published by BioMed Central
BioMed Central
BioMed Central is a UK-based, for-profit scientific publisher specialising in open access journal publication. BMC, and its sister companies Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central, publish over 200 scientific journals. Most BMC journals are now published only online. BMC describes itself as the...

 whose editors in chief
Editor in chief
An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...

 are Doug Altman
Doug Altman
Professor Douglas G. Altman is a British statistician. He is the Founder and Director of Centre for Statistics in Medicine and Cancer Research UK Medical Statistics Group....

 Curt Furberg, Jeremy Grimshaw, and Peter Rothwell. The journal encourages both authors and peer reviewers to make use of the CONSORT
Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials
CONSORT encompasses various initiatives developed by the CONSORT Group to alleviate the problems arising from inadequate reporting of randomized controlled trials.-The CONSORT Statement:...

 and QUOROM
QUOROM flow chart
-QUOROM flow charts in medical publications:A number of medical and life science journals require authors submitting papers on reviews, meta-analyses and systematic reviews to include a QUOROM flow chart. QUOROM is the acronym used for the Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses standards developed...

 checklists for randomized trials and systematic review
Systematic review
A systematic review is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic reviews of high-quality randomized controlled trials are crucial to evidence-based medicine...

s, respectively.

Journal contents

The Trials journal publishes several types of articles about trials, including regular research articles (detailing trial results), book review
Book review
A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review could be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review. It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or on the internet. Reviews are also often...

s, commentaries on topics of contemporary interest that are usually commissioned by the journal, letter articles, articles on new experimental or computational methods, tests or procedures, reviews
Literature review
A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic...

 including systematic review
Systematic review
A systematic review is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic reviews of high-quality randomized controlled trials are crucial to evidence-based medicine...

s, and articles in the form of study protocols.

Study protocols

Trials encourages trialists to publish study protocols in their journal. While many of the BMC journals
BMC journals
The BMC-series of journals are a collection of over 100 online research journals published by BioMed Central. Like all BioMed Central journals, they have a policy of open access to the research articles they publish. Between them, they cover all major subject areas within biology and medicine...

 have published trial protocols in the past, e.g. in BMC Emergency Medicine, Trials offers to make publication of protocols more easy as such articles will
The publication of study protocols has been proposed by some, including Trials editor-in-chief Doug Altman, as a way to improve medical research on at least four areas: Publishing protocols before they're finalised will allow others to provide constructive criticism, potentially improving the suggested trial; readers of scientific articles will be able to compare what was intended with the trial to what was actually done, in order to identify inappropriate data dredging
Data dredging
Data dredging is the inappropriate use of data mining to uncover misleading relationships in data. Data-snooping bias is a form of statistical bias that arises from this misuse of statistics...

; in general, protocol publication lets people know what is underway, reducing the risk of wasteful duplication of research effort and ensures that results from all trials are published, reducing the risk of publication bias
Publication bias
Publication bias is the tendency of researchers, editors, and pharmaceutical companies to handle the reporting of experimental results that are positive differently from results that are negative or inconclusive, leading to bias in the overall published literature...

 in systematic review
Systematic review
A systematic review is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic reviews of high-quality randomized controlled trials are crucial to evidence-based medicine...

s; and finally, efforts to increase publication of protocols may also improve trial registration in registers such as ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov is a registry of clinical trials. It is run by the United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, and is the largest clinical trials database, currently holding registrations from over 93,000 trials from more than 170 countries in the...

.
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