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Those responsible for conducting clinical trials sometimes fail in their ethical obligations towards subjects, sponsors, the scientific community and the general public by not publishing study outcomes in a timely manner. Some do not make results available at all (see e.g. [https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7292 Ross 2012], [https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i637 Chen 2016]). Problems surrounding the reporting of research outcomes could lead to an erosion of trust in clinical trials. Subjects feel their contribution is not respected, harms are not adequately managed, and taxpayers feel their money is misspent. A failure to report all of the outcomes of research also slows the pace of scientific development. The regulatory policies demanding clinical trials’ registration in advance of the purposed beginning of the study aim to address and mitigate these problems.

The registration of all interventional trials is considered to be a scientific and ethical responsibility. The Declaration of Helsinki states that "Every clinical trial must be registered in a publicly accessible database before recruitment of the first subject". The trials registration offers the following advantages: 1) ensure global access to scientific data;2) prevent unnecessary duplications, informing about similar or identical trials and therefore saving public resources;3) offer to patients the possibility of being recruited in an experimental study;4) facilitate the identification of publication bias and selective reporting;5) allow investigators to increase the quality of research design;6) support international scientific cooperation by enabling researchers and health care practitioners to identify trials in which they may have an interest;and 7) reduce the tendency to under-report negative findings.<ref>WHO Statement on Public Disclosure of Clinical Trial Results. 2017. Available from:https://www.who.int/ictrp/trial_reg/en/. Accessed May 2019.</ref>
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In 2004, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) announced that clinical trials beginning after July 1, 2005, would be under a new trial registration policy. <ref>International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Clinical Trial RegistrationAvailable from: [http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html] Accessed May 2019.</ref> To be published in member journals, the trials would have to be registered in an approved trial registry prior to the enrollment of the first participant. Since 2005, ICMJE has reiterated that registering a prospective study should be a condition of publication and after the announcement, several journals endorsed this policy. The registration must occur prior to enrollment of the first study participant in a trial registry that meets the quality criteria developed by WHO. <ref>WHO Statement on Public Disclosure of Clinical Trial Results. 2017. Available from: https://www.who.int/ictrp/en/ Accessed May 2019.</ref> However, the adherence for this requirement remains low by both researchers and journal editors and, unfortunately, not all clinical trials are registered before they start.

Recent findings suggest that among the reasons that lead to the low adherence to the new requirement by the researchers are: lack of awareness of the criteria;misunderstandings regarding the definition of clinical trial by ICMJE;and difficulties for registration. <ref>Loder E, Loder S, Cook S. Characteristics and publication fate of unregistered and retrospectively registered clinical trials submitted to The BMJ over 4 years. BMJ Open2018;8:e020037. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020037</ref> On the part of journal editors, the main reason is that not all journals are equally committed to meeting the registration requirements, strengths, and limitations of the study. The Committee on Publication Ethics suggested that “it is probably best to judge each paper on a case by case basis.”
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