ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier to be Added to MEDLINE/PubMed Data

NLM will be including the ClinicalTrials.gov identifier number in MEDLINE records, when that information appears in the original publication. NLM states that this will be added 'about July 2005'. I have been on the lookout for this addition but still can only find two citations with the ClinicalTrials.gov identified. Still it will be very handy once it is consistently applied.

The reason for this is based the recommendation from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors on the topic of registering clinical trials before publication of the results and that the clinical trial registration number be included at the end of the article abstract.

The data will also appear in PubMed in the Secondary Source ID list in the Citation display, in the SI field of the MEDLINE tagged display, and in the DataBankList elements of the XML display.

An example in the Citation format display would be:

Secondary Source ID:

• ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT00000161

If there are multiple ClinicalTrials.gov numbers mentioned in one journal article, all will be added to the MEDLINE record.

In PubMed, the data will be searchable using the [si] search tag; each of the pieces or the entire string is searchable, e.g.:

nct00000161 [si]

clinicaltrials.gov [si]

clinicaltrials.gov/nct00000161 [si]

Use "clinicaltrials.gov [si]" to retrieve all citations to articles listing trial registration in ClinicalTrials.gov regardless of which particular trial is involved.

For More Information:
Tybaert S, Knecht LS. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier to be Added to MEDLINE^®/PubMed^® Data. NLM Tech Bull. 2005 May-Jun;(344):e13.