Making research visible in a publicly accessible database before recruitment begins reduces duplication and protects participants from unnecessary research.

CTIMPs

Clinical trials of investigational medicinal products (CTIMPs) and combined trials of an IMP and investigational medicinal device are now automatically registered (free of charge) on the ISRCTN registry when the trial is submitted via the combined review service.

CTIMPs that were running before January 2021 are registered on the EudraCT database (and will still need to upload results to this database).

Clinical Trials

Automatic registration will be rolled out for other types of nonCTIMP clinical trials in time. For now, other clinical trials should be registered on a platform acceptable to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), who will only consider clinical trials for publication if they have been registered in an appropriate registry.

The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as ‘any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes’ and lists www.clinicaltrials.gov and www.ISRCTN.org as acceptable registries.

Through the ISRCTN scheme, each trial is given a unique number which enables tracking of the study through publications and reports. There is a fee for registration with ISRCTN, you should request funding for registration in your grant application.

ClinicalTrials.gov is free of charge.  To register with this scheme, contact ACCORD to create a user account, allowing you access to register trials on the system and release the records for public view once your registration is complete.

If your study has not been submitted to an approved registry before enrollment of the first participant, you may not be able to publish your results.

Other Research

Other types of research such as observational studies and questionnaires can use the Open Science Framework.