The first issue of Elsevier's new open access journal Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications features a new method to make cancer clinical trials more effective, a better way of determining whether a trial was successful and a dashboard that helps patients enroll in trials.
The journal is a spin-off of the well-established title Contemporary Clinical Trials.
There are many ways to carry out a clinical trial. Researchers need to think about the number of patients to enroll, the type of treatments to give and their frequency, among many other factors. Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications publishes methodology and statistics that answer these questions, helping researchers build on each other's work and design better trials.
For example, in the first issue of the journal, which is now available on ScienceDirect, researchers from Genentech Inc. and the Deerfield Institute describe a new trial design that helps researchers take into account delayed effects of immune-oncology treatments.
"I trust that the readers will find the journal a valuable source of recent advancements in clinical trials," said Dr. Zhezhen Jin, co-Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications and Professor of Biostatistics at Columbia University in New York. He also explained that this knowledge can "facilitate the design, conduct and analysis of their trials."
The journal also aims to tackle the problem of publication bias towards positive results by making all trial data open access.
"A major objective of the journal is to reduce publication bias, which is a major issue in the field of clinical trials," said Dr. Zheng Su, co-Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications and VP at the Deerfield Institute in New York.
There are two main approaches to clinical trials: randomized and non-randomized. In randomized trials, the participants do not know whether they are receiving the treatment or a placebo. In non-randomized trials, the participants are often all given the treatment. Many clinical trials journals only publish randomized trials, but Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications will publish both.
"There are several existing clinical trials journals that either give preferential treatment to positive trial results due to their perceived higher significance, or focus only on randomized trials," added Dr. Jin. "In contrast, Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications provides a platform for trialists around the world to share their knowledge on all aspects of clinical trials. We're making scientifically valid and technically sound original research findings freely accessible regardless of their perceived importance or impact."
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