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BioMed Central believes that publishing study protocols will help to improve the standard of medical research by:

• Enabling researchers to obtain feedback on draft study protocols through peer review
• Enabling readers to compare what was originally intended with what was actually done, thus preventing both "data dredging" and post-hoc revisions of study aims
• Enabling funders and researchers to see what studies are underway and hence reduce duplication of research effort
• Enabling systematic reviewers to find trials, which may in turn reduce distortion of the evidence from publication bias
• Enabling patients to see what studies are underway that they may wish to volunteer for

For more information on why protocol publication is important, see: Publishing study protocols: making them visible will improve registration, reporting and recruitment BMC News and Views 2001 2:4.

Publishing your study protocol in a medical BMC journal

By publishing your study protocol in a medical BMC journal, it becomes a fully citable open-access article - freely and universally accessible online, permanently archived, with copyright resting with the authors.

• The study protocol can be for proposed or ongoing research.
• Study protocols will usually be published without peer review if the study has received ethics approval and a grant from a major funding body (proof will be required).
• Study protocols without funding or ethical approval will be peer reviewed. If accepted, the reviewers' reports will be posted online with the published protocol as part of the pre-publication history (open peer review).
• For study protocols of controlled trials of health care interventions, the last section of the abstract should be Trial Registration: listing the trial registry and the unique identifying number, e.g. Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN73824458. Please note that there should be no space between the letters and numbers of the trial registration number. The trial registers that currently meet all of the ICMJE guidelines can be found at http://www.icmje.org/faq.pdf.
• Publishing your study protocol in a medical BMC journal does not commit you to submitting subsequent reports of the study to us, although we do, of course, welcome such submissions.

Examples of study protocols already published, include:

Protocol for Birmingham Atrial Fibrillation Treatment of the Aged study (BAFTA): a randomised controlled trial of warfarin versus aspirin for stroke prevention in the management of atrial fibrillation in an elderly primary care population [ISRCTN89345269]. BMC Cardiovascular Disorders 2003 3:9.

An Australian Aboriginal birth cohort: a unique resource for a life course study of an Indigenous population. A study protocol. BMC International Health and Human Rights 2003, 3:1.

A case-control study of autism and mumps-measles-rubella vaccination using the general practice research database: design and methodology. BMC Public Health 2001 1:2.

Submitting your study protocol

Find out more about the scope of our journals, our instructions for authors or how to submit a study protocol.

Alternatively contact editorial@biomedcentral.com.