Pragmatic and Observational Research

Aims and Scope

Editor-in-Chief: Professor David Price

Pragmatic and Observational Research is an international, peer reviewed, open access journal that publishes data from studies designed to reflect more closely medical interventions in real-world clinical practice compared with classical randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Classical RCTs are designed to maximise internal validity and to establish an unequivocal cause-and-effect relationship between an intervention and an outcome. Classical RCT populations represent only minority groups of real-life patients and are thus limited in their extent. Complementary data from studies designed to reflect more closely the nature of real-world patients and medicines usage are required to inform guidelines and extrapolate research findings across the broad heterogeneous patient populations encountered in everyday clinical practice.

The journal publishes data from prospective and retrospective studies designed to evaluate outcomes associated with real-world clinical practice. Dissemination of this data and the techniques and approaches used to optimise real-world modeling allows outcome validation and improved standards and collaboration in this growing area of research.

The journal is characterized by the rapid reporting of reviews, original research, methodologies, analytics, modeling, clinical studies and patient surveys across all disease areas. Specific topics covered in the journal include:

• Pragmatic clinical trials
• Prospective and retrospective observational studies
• Quantitative and qualitative real-world research
• Data collection systems
• Comparison of non-pharmacological interventions in the real world
• Comparison of pharmacological interventions in the real world
• Comparison of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions in the real world
• Reviews of clinical databases and data capture
• Valid of proxy outcome measures in real-world studies
• Statistical approaches to patient matching in real-world studies
• Validation of real-world results
• Derivation of gold standards in real-world research
• Best practice and guideline reviews in real-world research
• Patient preference, satisfaction, convenience, acceptability and adherence
• Patient reported outcomes in derivation of meaningful research outcomes and study endpoints.

Pragmatic and Observational Research will no longer consider meta-analyses for publication.