Searching for Clinical Trials

Updated over 2 weeks ago

Elicit allows you to search both research papers and clinical trials. This guide explains how to effectively search and filter clinical trial data.

Switching to Clinical Trials Search

From the homepage

• Select clinical trials in the search window when starting a Research Report, Systematic Review, or Find Papers workflow

From the Gather stage

• Look for the corpus selector button (displays either "Research papers" or "Clinical trials")
• Click the button to open the dropdown menu
• Select "Clinical trials" from the options

Note: The clinical trials feature may not be available to all users.

Available Filters for Clinical Trials

Once you've selected clinical trials as your search corpus, you can use specialized filters by clicking the "Filters" button.

Has Results

Filter to show only trials that have published results. Useful when you want to see completed studies with available outcomes data.

Phase Filters

• NA - Not applicable
• Early Phase 1 - Very early safety studies
• Phase 1 - Initial safety and dosage studies
• Phase 2 - Efficacy and side effects studies
• Phase 3 - Large-scale effectiveness comparisons
• Phase 4 - Post-market surveillance studies

Recruitment Status

• Active, not recruiting - Study ongoing but not accepting new participants
• Completed - Study has ended normally
• Enrolling by invitation - Participants recruited by invitation only
• Not yet recruiting - Study registered but recruitment hasn't started
• Recruiting - Currently accepting participants
• Suspended - Study temporarily halted
• Terminated - Study ended early
• Withdrawn - Study withdrawn before enrolling participants
• Available - Expanded access studies

Publication Year

Filter clinical trials by registration or publication year. This filters by the most recent publish date, since trials can be updated multiple times.

Limitations

• Data Source: Clinical trials data is sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov, which primarily includes trials conducted in or by US-based organizations. International trials may be underrepresented.
• Search Capabilities: Unlike research papers, clinical trials search focuses on the trial protocol and registration information rather than full-text results papers.
• Results Availability: The "Has Results" filter indicates whether results have been posted to ClinicalTrials.gov. Many completed trials may have published results in journals not linked to the registry entry.
• Find Papers: This feature is only available as part of Research Reports and Systematic Reviews. It is not yet available for Find Papers.

When to Use Clinical Trials vs. Research Papers

Use Clinical Trials search when: looking for ongoing or planned studies, investigating specific interventions or drugs, understanding the research pipeline in a field, or finding trials for potential participation.

Use Research Papers search when: looking for published results and analyses, seeking systematic reviews or meta-analyses, wanting detailed methodology discussions, or needing peer-reviewed conclusions.

You can always switch between the two corpora to get a comprehensive view of both the ongoing research and published findings in your area of interest.