The Society of Biology is pleased to announce its support for aims of the AllTrials petition, www.alltrials.net. The Society strongly supports evidence-based decision-making and access to information is a key pre-requisite of this. Our decision reflects our support for transparency in clinical trials and we consider that all trials should be registered, with information on the trial protocol and sponsor, and the full methods and results, reported. We would encourage the development of accessible lay summaries to accompany reports to ensure public engagement and facilitate interpretation. We recognise the complexity of attempts to ensure greater transparency for all data underlying past clinical trials, and that the feasibility of its release cannot be assured. However, we look forward to successful and equitable outcomes of all efforts to address the broad issues of access to clinical trial data, including historic data, in order to ensure that full and correct value is gained and implications for future trials can be appropriately realised, for the benefit of patients, researchers, and the public.
