Oxford, UK, June 20, 2016 - Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced that it will participate in a multi-publisher pilot project led by Crossref. As part of the project, several of Elsevier's leading journals will share details of registered clinical trials with Crossref so that they can be linked to studies that were published as a result of the trial.
For papers that report on clinical trials, Elsevier and other participating publishers will provide Crossref with the DOI and clinical trial number (CTN) of the article. This will create a linked network of papers relevant to individual clinical trials. As a result, studies that were derived from one trial, but that were published by different publishers years apart can now be linked. Researchers can find studies linked to clinical trials by clicking the CrossMark logo on a particular trial report or by using Crossref open APIs.
Initially, 20 leading health and medical science journals will participate in the pilot, including The Lancet, the European Journal of Cancer and the American Journal of Cardiology. Other health and medical science journals will be added after the initial test phase.
Linking studies to the clinical trial registration will enhance readers' understanding of the full results that came out of a trial, making scientific reporting more transparent. It will also enable readers to more easily measure the results of trials against their original aims.
The clinical trial registries involved in the pilot are endorsed by the World Health Organization and include ClinicalTrials.gov, the UTN and ISRCTN registries, along with several leading national registries, such as the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry.
Discussing the project, David Clark, Senior Vice President, Health & Medical Sciences at Elsevier, commented: 'Elsevier has identified over 5,000 records of clinical trial registrations amongst the first 20 journals included in this pilot, with many more journals and accompanying clinical trial reports ready to be added after this pilot has launched. We are excited to use technology to improve the transparency of STM reporting.'
"These records from Elsevier will be a huge boost to this important multi-publisher initiative to increase the visibility of clinical trial reports," said Kirsty Meddings, Product Manager at Crossref. "Elsevier has been one of the integral participants in planning the pilot, and we are excited to see the results start to come in."
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About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions -- among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey -- and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 35,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a world-leading provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com
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Ash Allan
Elsevier
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