Registration is the first step towards research transparency and the future dissemination of health research outcomes. Its key aim is to ensure that all healthcare decisions are informed by all of the available evidence, thus, overcoming publication bias and selective reporting. Registration provides opportunities for collaboration and reduces duplication of research efforts; it also improves awareness of studies for clinicians, researchers, patients and the public.

Certain countries mandate the registration of clinical trials, while several funding agencies and official bodies strongly recommend it. A growing number of medical journals now insist on registration of clinical trials before they consider the submission of a paper about a study protocol and/or results.

For more information on current legislation and registration guidelines please visit our resources page.

 

Why register your study with ISRCTN?

 

• The preferred partner of the Department of Health and Social Care (UK) - ISRCTN supports transparency in clinical research, helps reduce selective reporting of results, and ensures an unbiased and complete evidence base.
• Simple and flexible submission process – includes contextual help, save and preview functions, and integration of the ORCID identifier. Follow-up messages enable you to stay updated with the progress of your registration.
• Easy to use and user-friendly website – differentiate categories at a glance and search by condition, intervention, funder and many other fields.
• Content is reviewed and curated by a team of expert editors.
• Prospective and retrospective registrations are accepted.
• New fields, such as recruitment start and end dates, participating sites and plain English summaries, allow prospective participants to find relevant studies.
• High visibility – Content freely, publicly accessible and pooled in the international WHO trial search portal and in Be Part of Research, if recruiting in the UK.
• Research outputs, such as protocol, participant information sheet, statistical analysis plan, summary results, publications, preprints, and individual participant data are actively added to the record.
• UK focussed, open to all study designs in all areas of health, conforms to international guidelines.