Inclusion to the list of journals that follow ICMJE Recommendations

The academic journal "Vestnik Rossiiskoi akademii meditsinskikh nauk" (Annals of the Russian academy of medical sciences) has been recently added to the list of journals that follow the ICMJE's Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. We insist that our authors must refer to these guidelines along with the author's guideline of our journal.

On the ICMJE

In 2005, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors initiated the adoption of the new requirements for manuscripts containing the results of research. It was assumed that a scientific paper reporting clinical trial results can be published only in case the author provided all the data of the research in a publicly accessible registry. Over the next 2 years to the initiative was adopted and supported by many journals. This policy provides public information about the existence and design of research conducted in a clinical setting. The adoption of this requirements has caused a wide resonance among researchers and sponsors who doubted that study registration has any advantages.

The purpose of clinical trial registration is to prevent selective publication and selective reporting of research outcomes, to prevent unnecessary duplication of research effort, to help patients and the public know what trials are planned or ongoing into which they might want to enroll, and to help give ethics review boards considering approval of new studies a view of similar work and data relevant to the research they are considering. Retrospective registration, for example at the time of manuscript submission, meets none of these purposes. Those purposes apply also to research with alternative designs, for example, observational studies. For that reason, the ICMJE encourages registration of research with non-trial designs, but because the exposure or intervention in non-trial research is not dictated by the researchers, the ICMJE does not require it.