Europe has voted to make clinical trials more accessible to the public, with a new memo detailing the steps researchers and journals must take to increase transparency and reduce publication bias.

ecancermedicalscience has previously reported on the multi-institutional AllTrials Initiative, a multi-institution effort to make the results of clinical trials visible to both researchers and the public. With a large percentage of clinical trials not being considered worthy of publishing, their results are therefore inaccessible to prescribers, patients and the public. The results? Publications biases, opaque research, and less information available to those who would benefit most from it – the patients.

Now EU-funded clinical trials will need to make accessibility improvements, including making details of the trial available on the publicly accessible Clinical Trials Register.

“This is an excellent small step forward after some really good work by [the Members of the European Parliament],” AllTrials Initiative co-founder Dr Ben Goldacre stated in a press release. There are still improvements to be made to ensure the future of open clinical data: “We still don’t have full reporting for all trials on the medicines we are using right now, today, medicines which we will continue to use for the foreseeable future.”

Open access to clinical studies will improve patient outcomes, foster better and more meaningful future trials, and lead to the development of medical treatments. The next big challenge will be making these results openly accessible to the public.

Read the European Commission’s memo on new clinical trials policies here.

Watch Prof Gordon McVie, Managing Editor of ecancermedicalscience, discuss the ruling and its repercussions.

ecancermedicalscience considers all clinical trials relating to cancer for publication - whether the findings are positive or negative. The journal is freely accessible to the public.