Clinical trial registries as Scientometric data: A novel solution for linking and deduplicating clinical trials from multiple registries

2021
Registries of clinical trials are a potential source for scientometric analysis of medical research and serve important functions for the research community and the public at large. Clinical trials that recruit patients in Germany are usually registered in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS) or in international registries such as ClinicalTrials.gov. Furthermore, the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) aggregates trials from multiple primary registries. We queried the DRKS, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the ICTRP for trials with a recruiting location in Germany. Trials that were registered in multiple registries were linked using the primary and secondary identifiers and a Random Forest model based on various similarity metrics. We identified 35,912 trials that were conducted in Germany. The majority of the trials was registered in multiple databases. 32,106 trials were linked using primary IDs, 26 were linked using a Random Forest model, and 10,537 internal duplicates on ICTRP were identified using the Random Forest model after finding pairs with matching primary or secondary IDs. In cross-validation, the Random Forest increased the F1-score from 96.4% to 97.1% compared to a linkage based solely on secondary IDs on a manually labelled data set. 28% of all trials were registered in the German DRKS. 54% of the trials on ClinicalTrials.gov, 43% of the trials on the DRKS and 56% of the trials on the ICTRP were pre-registered. The ratio of pre-registered studies and the ratio of studies that are registered in the DRKS increased over time.
SCIENTOMETRICS
页码:9733-9750|卷号:126|期号:12
ISSN:0138-9130
收录类型
SSCI
发表日期
2021
学科领域
循证社会科学-综合
国家
德国
语种
英语
DOI
10.1007/s11192-021-04111-w
其他关键词
INTERNATIONAL-COMMITTEE; PACKAGE; IMPACT
EISSN
1588-2861
资助机构
Projekt DEAL; German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)Federal Ministry of Education & Research (BMBF) [01PU17010]
资助信息
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF #01PU17010).
被引频次(WOS)
0
被引更新日期
2022-01
来源机构
Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences Ruhr University Bochum
关键词
Clinical trials Clinical Trial Registries DRKS ClinicalTrials gov ICTRP Random Forest