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Trials' 10th anniversary

In 2006, the journal Current Controlled Trials in Cardiovascular Medicine relaunched as the one we know today, Trials, with the original Editor-in-Chief line-up of Douglas G Altman, Curt D Furberg, Jeremy M Grimshaw and Peter M Rothwell.

Since then, Trials has been experimenting with, and refining, innovative approaches to improving communication about trials. The journal was a leader in the field at establishing the publication of study protocols for randomized controlled trials, and has been integral as a platform to trialists, clinicians and researchers in sharing developments in the design, conduct and reporting of trials. Both the Editors and staff of Trials are excited to see what the next 10 years will bring.

To coincide with Trials’ 10th anniversary and publication of its 3000th article, we are looking back and celebrating 10 years of Trials.

Trials has also put together a collection of articles, Ten years of Trials, reflecting on the last ten years and looking forward at what the next ten years might hold for the field.

Trials 10 years journey

What do those in the field think of Trials?

"One of the best collaborations I can remember proposing resulted from introducing Doug Altman to Vitek Tracz just over 10 years ago. Vitek is a visionary publisher willing to take risks. In response to someone who challenged his proposed open access publishing model in the build-up to the BioMed Central stable of journals he replied simply: ‘All I have to lose is my money’!  Doug Altman also had a vision of how some of the waste in research and deficiencies in the quality of research reports could be addressed by exploiting more fully the potential of electronic publishing.  We should all be grateful that Vitek and Doug hit it off 10 years ago, and that Trials was the result."

Sir Iain Chalmers, coordinator of the James Lind Initiative and one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, UK

"In its first 10 years, Trials has played many roles, but central has been improving and making public the elusive trial protocol, which is essential for interpretation and replication."

Professor Paul Glasziou, Bond University, Australia

"With its high editorial standards, Trials has provided an excellent platform for stakeholders, including clinicians, patients, researchers, policy-makers, and ‎payers, to learn about ongoing trials from published protocols and results from completed trials. Trial researchers and methodologists have also used Trials as a teaching forum to advance innovations in trial designs and methods."

Professor Lehana Thabane, McMaster University, Canada

Check out the most cited articles in Trials

Practical methods for incorporating summary time-to-event data into meta-analysis
Jayne F Tierney, Lesley A Stewart, Davina Ghersi, Sarah Burdett and Matthew R Sydes
Published in June 2007, this article has been cited over 920 times.

What influences recruitment to randomised controlled trials? A review of trials funded by two UK funding agencies
Alison M McDonald, Rosemary C Knight, Marion K Campbell, Vikki A Entwistle, Adrian M Grant, Jonathan A Cook, Diana R Elbourne, David Francis, Jo Garcia, Ian Roberts and Claire Snowdon
Published in April 2006, this Research article has been cited over 210 times.

CONSORT 2010 Statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised trials
Kenneth F Schulz, Douglas G Altman, David Moher and the CONSORT Group
Published in March 2010, this article has been cited over 190 times.

Recap on the most accessed articles in Trials

Through the looking glass: understanding non-inferiority
Jennifer Schumi and Janet T Wittes
Published in May 2011, this Review has received over 90,000 accesses.

Managing clinical trials
Barbara Farrell, Sara Kenyon and Haleema Shakur
Published in July 2010, this Review has received over 80,000 accesses.

From protocol to published report: a study of consistency in the reporting of academic drug trials
Louise Berendt, Torbjörn Callréus, Lene Grejs Petersen, Karin Friis Bach, Henrik Enghusen Poulsen and Kim Dalhoff
Published in February 2016, this Research article has received over 25,000 accesses.

Our Trials authors are also bloggers...

Trials supports greater dissemination of your research by enabling authors to blog about their findings via the BioMed Central Blogs Network. Below is a selection of blogs on Trials articles.

Don’t just stand there, do something! Exploring endorsement and (non)adherence to CONSORT
Larissa Shamseer, University of Ottawa, Canada, blogged about her research on the current status of endorsement of the CONSORT Statement across 168 biomedical journals.

Assessments of harms using unpublished clinical study reports
Alex Hodkinson, University of York, UK, blogged on his research looking at the reporting of harms outcomes between journal publications and unpublished clinical study reports.

Access to clinical trial data from the European Medicines Agency
Peter Doshi, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, USA, and Tom Jefferson, Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group, discussed their research following freedom of information requests for regulatory data to the European Medicines Agency.

Embedded recruitment trials: creating Russian dolls
Shaun Treweek, University of Aberdeen and the Trial Forge initiative, UK, blogged on guidelines for reporting embedded recruitment trials.

More blogs on Trials articles can be found via our Blogs Network

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    2.5 - 2-year Impact Factor
    2.5 - 5-year Impact Factor
    0.827 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.814 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    33 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    129 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    6,282,238 downloads
    5,569 Altmetric mentions