Previously unidentified duplicate registrations of clinical trials: an exploratory analysis of registry data worldwide.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Trial registries were established to combat publication bias by creating a comprehensive and unambiguous record of initiated clinical trials. However, the proliferation of registries and registration policies means that a single trial may be registered multiple times (i.e., "duplicates"). Because unidentified duplicates threaten our ability to identify trials unambiguously, we investigate to what degree duplicates have been identified across registries globally.

Methods

We retrieved all records from the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) search portal and made a list of all records identified as duplicates by the ICTRP. To investigate how to discriminate duplicates from non-duplicates, we applied text-based simi

SUBMITTER: van Valkenhoef G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4946209 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature