BMC Medicine becomes the first clinical research journal to accept Registered Reports

BMC Medicine has become the world’s first clinical research journal to accept Registered Reports, enabling researchers to take a proactive approach towards improving transparency and reproducibility in science. The Registered Reports format is supported by the Center for Open Science (COS) and aims to minimise bias by allowing authors to submit their rationale and methods for peer-review before any experiments are conducted. Articles that pass peer-review will be accepted-in-principle meaning that, as long as the study is completed in accordance with the pre-registered methodology, the article will be published following a second round of peer-review. Louisa Flintoft, Executive Editor of BMC’s Flagship journals, said: “BMC Medicine is the first clinical research journal to take on this innovative approach to publishing. We believe that this will enable the journal to play a vital role in making science more robust and transparent. This is particularly important for clinical research where reported results can have a direct impact on patients.” Chris Chambers, Chair of the COS Registered Reports Committee, said: “This is a tremendous step forward for transparency and reproducibility in medical research. BMC Medicine will be the first major medical journal to offer Registered Reports, and the first to adopt a model specially tailored for clinical trials. The impact of this advance is potentially game-changing, eliminating hidden outcome switching and publication bias ...
Source: News from STM - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Featured World Source Type: news