“Publication Rate in Preclinical Research: a Plea for Preregistration”, 2020-08-27 (; similar):
Objectives: The ultimate goal of biomedical research is the development of new treatment options for patients. Animal models are used if questions cannot be addressed otherwise. Currently, it is widely believed that a large fraction of performed studies are never published, but there are no data that directly address this question.
Method: We have tracked a selection of animal study protocols approved in the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, to assess whether these have led to a publication with a follow-up period of 7 years.
Results: We found that 60% of all animal study protocols led to at least one publication (full text or abstract). A total of 5590 animals were used in these studies, of which 26% was reported in the resulting publications.
Conclusion: The data presented here underline the need for preclinical preregistration, in view of the risk of reporting and publication bias in preclinical research. We plea that all animal study protocols should be prospectively registered on an online, accessible platform to increase transparency and data sharing. To facilitate this, we have developed a platform dedicated to animal study protocol registration: www.preclinicaltrials.eu.
Strengths and limitations of this study:
This study directly traces animal study protocols to potential publications and is the first study to assess the number of animals used and the number of animals published.
We had full access to all documents submitted to the animal experiment committee of the University Medical Center Utrecht from the selected protocols.
There is a sufficient follow-up period for researchers to publish their animal study.
Due to privacy reasons, we are not able to publish the exact search terms used.
A delay has occurred between the start of this project and time of publishing, this is related to the political sensitivity of this subject.