By signing the AllTrials petition you are signing up to the principle of the AllTrials campaign – that clinical trials should be registered and results reported.

For organisations this isn’t a statement of perfection. As the Medical Research Council told us, “The MRC celebrates its centenary this year and it would be surprising if, in our one hundred year history, there were no unreported or unpublished skeletons in our cupboards”. But they, and hundreds of other organisations, made a commitment to do what they can to change the situation.

We want organisations that join to work with us and other groups in their sectors to establish what this means in practice, as the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and British Pharmacological Society are doing in their joint work on codes of conduct for members of professional and learned societies.

Companies and trial funders who joined have told us they will put in place measures to grant access to the clinical trial information they have access to. We understand that some trials have been lost to time because companies merge, papers are lost, storage drives fail and researchers with the knowledge of past trials retire. We encourage companies that join to set out their own particular situations. GSK told us for example that it formed as a company in 2000, so it can definitely register and report the results of all clinical trials as far back as then, and will consider requests for information from earlier trials on a case-by-case basis.

We expect everyone – individual or organisation – to share the link to the petition far and wide and help spread the word about the campaign by hosting the campaign video on their websites, writing blogs and news pieces, and encouraging friends, family members, colleagues and networks to join too.

If you can think of other ways to help or there are other organisations that you believe would support our aims then encourage them to sign up as you have done and get them to contact us.

If your organisation would like to sign the petition, email your logo and a short statement to alltrials@senseaboutscience.org.