Transplantation, the journal of The Transplanation Society, has joined other journals calling for open access to clinical drug trial data. From yesterday's press release: 'The editors of Transplantation, the official journal of The Transplantation Society, have announced that Transplantation will join with other leading kidney journals and the major general journals --such as New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet-- in establishing a policy that clinical research studies involving trials will only be considered for publication if they have been submitted to a free, electronically searchable clinical trial register. The new policy is outlined in an editorial [PS: access limited to subscribers] to be published in the April 15 issue of the Transplantation....By requiring advance registration of clinical trials, the editors seek to ensure that full information on these studies will be freely available to the general public. The policy is intended to address the problem of "selective publication" --studies yielding negative results are often not submitted for publication, and thus not included in the body of available research evidence on a given treatment....Under the new policy, all studies to be submitted for publication in Transplantation or the other kidney/transplantation journals must be listed in a public trials registry....The editors do not stipulate any specific trial registry, but the registries must be available to the public without charge and electronically searchable, among other requirements.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/08/2005 11:35:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
