A major medical journal has updated its instructions to authors, now requiring that they publish protocols of clinical trials, along with any changes made along the way.
We learned of this change via the COMPare project, which has been tracking trial protocol changes in major medical journals — and been critical of the Annals of Internal Medicine‘s response to those changes. However, Darren Taichman, the executive deputy editor of the journal, told us the journal’s decision to publish trial protocols was a long time coming:
This change was something we planned prior to COMPARE and were intending to implement with an update of our online journal that is in process. However, the barrier COMPARE encountered in obtaining a protocol for one of the studies in their audit prompted us to implement it earlier.