On to the Next Level: ClinicalTrials.gov Goes (More Fully) Plain!

It’s a rather tacit revolution that happened on September 26, 2022, in the “What’s new” section of the https://clinicaltrials.gov website. A short announcement states that “A Plain Language Checklist for Lay Brief Summaries (PDF) is added to the Support Materials under Data Element Definitions, Templates, and Checklists. The checklist identifies plain language best practices to help investigators write brief summaries that can be easily understood by the general public.”
This unemotional announcement is a tremendous move toward more understandable entries in ClinicalTrials.gov (CT.gov)—that is, a move returning to CT.gov’s original intentions.