Coordination and planning of clinical research on a national and global level.

In reproductive medicine, the needs and desires of infertility patients drive future research, with the most important outcome being live birth of a baby. Large, multicenter, randomized clinical trials are considered the best research tool to evaluate the effectiveness of medical interventions, but they can often take a long time to find definitive answers. Advances in individual participant data (IPD) and network meta-analysis have enabled research questions to be answered more quickly, but better planning could streamline this process further.

Peer review comments on drug trials submitted to medical journals differ depending on sponsorship, results and acceptance: a retrospective cohort study.

Objective: During peer review, submitted manuscripts are scrutinised by independent experts to assist journal editors in their decision-making and to help improve the quality of articles. In this retrospective cohort study, peer review comments for drug trials submitted to medical journals were analysed to investigate whether there is a relation between the content of these comments and sponsorship, direction of results and decision about acceptance.

Design/setting: Descriptive content analysis of reviewer comments made on manuscripts on drug trials submitted to eight medical journals (January 2010-April 2012).

Differences between information in registries and articles did not influence publication acceptance.

Objectives: To assess whether journals are more likely to reject manuscripts with differences between information in registries and articles. We compared differences by sponsorship and assessed whether selective reporting favored publication of significant outcomes.

Study Design And Setting: Drug trials submitted to eight journals (January 2010-April 2012) were included.

Role of editorial and peer review processes in publication bias: analysis of drug trials submitted to eight medical journals.

Background: Publication bias is generally ascribed to authors and sponsors failing to submit studies with negative results, but may also occur after submission. We evaluated whether submitted manuscripts on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with drugs are more likely to be accepted if they report positive results.

Methods: Manuscripts submitted from January 2010 through April 2012 to one general medical journal (BMJ) and seven specialty journals (Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, British Journal of Ophthalmology, Gut, Heart, Thorax, Diabetologia, and Journal of Hepatology) were included, if at least one study arm assessed the efficacy or safety of a drug and a statistical test was used to evaluate treatment effects.