In concert with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Archives of Surgery will require, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration of all trials in a public trials registry (such as http://ClinicalTrials.gov). Trials must be registered at or before the onset of patient enrollment. This policy applies to any clinical trial starting enrollment after March 1, 2005. For trials that began enrollment before this date, registration will be required by June 1, 2005, before considering the trial for publication. The trial registration number should be supplied at the time of submission.
For details about this new policy, and for information on how the ICMJE defines a clinical trial, see the editorials by DeAngelis et al in the September 8, 2004 (2004;292:1363-1364) and June 15, 2005 (2005;293:2927-2929) issues of JAMA. Also see the Instructions to Authors on our Web site: www.archsurg.com.