Towards threaded publications: helping to set the scientific record straight

"More than a decade ago Altman and Chalmers envisaged a new way to publish clinical research. They proposed that, facilitated by the advent of electronic journals, a new age of transparency in science communication might soon be upon us. In their 1999 article in The Lancet, they wrote: “Electronic publication of a protocol could be simply the first element in a sequence of 'threaded' electronic publications, which continues with reports of the resulting research (published in sufficient detail to meet some of the criticisms of less detailed reports published in print journals), followed by deposition of the complete data set.” This prescient statement came five years before the registration of clinical trials became a prerequisite for publication in most major medical journals. Progress to this ideal has been slow – perhaps frustratingly so – but a number of new initiatives at BioMed Central should help speed the pace of change...."