From 1 January 2007, papers reporting clinical trials must be registered in a public trials registry at or before the onset of enrolment to be considered for publication.
If you are submitting a randomised control trial, please provide the registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry in the last line of the papers’ structured abstract.

The BMJ Publishing Group’s criteria for a suitable public trial registry are: free to access, searchable, and identifies trials with a unique number; registration is free or has minimal cost; registered information is validated; registered entry includes details to identify the trial and investigator and includes the status of the trial; and the research question, methodology, intervention, funding, and sponsorship must all be disclosed.

For further information see Statement from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

Please report RCTs in accordance with the CONSORT statement checklist and CONSORT statement flowchart (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials.) This ensures that you provide enough information for editors, peer reviewers, and readers to see how the trial was performed and to judge whether the findings are likely to be reliable.

Please report these in accordance with the QUOROM (Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses) statement (Moher D, Cook DJ, Eastwood S, Olkin I, Rennie D, Stroup DF, for the QUOROM Group. Improving the quality of reports of meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials: the QUOROM statement, Lancet 1999; 354:1896-1900

If appropriate, study design should conform to the MOOSE initiative [PDF] (meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology).

If appropriate, study design should conform to the STARD Initiative [PDF] -- Towards Complete and Accurate Reporting of Studies on Diagnostic Accuracy.

Further guidelines:

1. Economic evaluation submissions.

2. Educational interventions submissions.

3. Qualitative submissions.