Barriers to and facilitators of interventions to counter publication bias: thematic analysis of scholarly articles and stakeholder interviews

Background When the nature and direction of research results affect their chances of publication, a distortion of the evidence base – termed publication bias – results. Despite considerable recent efforts to implement measures to reduce the non-publication of trials, publication bias is still a major problem in medical research. The objective of our study was to identify barriers to and facilitators of interventions to prevent or reduce publication bias.