PLoS Clinical Trials, a new online journal, will be launched next spring to report results of all randomized controlled clinical trials on humans in all medical and public-health disciplines, its sponsor said Monday. The Public Library of Science in San Francisco said the only requirements for publication will 1) that the trial was conducted according to the Helsinki guidelines on human research, 2) it is classified by an internationally accepted registry -- such as the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number or ClinicalTrials.gov -- and 3) it is reported accurately according to CONSORT criteria....Each submitted trial will undergo peer review by a statistician and a clinical researcher in the appropriate specialty, the statement said. The journal will publish a summary of the reviewers' comments along with each article, and readers also will be able to comment on articles at a special section of the PLoS Web site. Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health, and currently president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute and chairman of the board of PLoS, said the purpose of the journal was to make as much research information available as soon as possible. "The important thing is getting the results of the studies out, so the scientific community can review them," Varmus told United Press International. "Knowing that a drug that has been approved for one use is not effective in a different situation may keep another group of researchers from wasting resources and reinventing the wheel."...Global Trial Bank, a non-profit subsidiary of the American Medical Informatics Association, will collaborate with the PLoS on data storage. After a trial is published in PLoS Clinical Trials, the results will be coded and entered into the GTB database for open-access searching, browsing and data-mining, and reciprocal links will be created between the two entities. Each published trial also will be linked to a site on the international registry chosen by its investigators.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/19/2005 04:47:00 PM.
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.
