Clinical Trial Registration and Publication of Randomized Controlled Trials

To the Editor: Dr Mathieu and colleagues¹ compared registered and published primary outcomes in randomized trials. Journals were classified as “requiring trial registration for publication” or “with no information about registration.”

As editors of Arthritis & Rheumatism/Arthritis Care & Research (A&R/AC&R; the journals share a title), we were surprised that A&R/AC&R was included among those journals providing no information about registration of clinical trials. Our journals published a policy on registration of clinical trials in August 2005.² The “instructions to contributors” section on our Web site³ includes the following instruction: “Clinical research studies must be registered with the appropriate national body.” Furthermore, authors submitting manuscripts are required to reply to a checkbox indicating whether the manuscript falls under the clinical trials registration guidelines, and if so, the authors must indicate the registration number. To the best of our knowledge, all manuscripts received after the deadline we set for compliance (January 1, 2007) and subsequently published have fulfilled the registration requirements.