The outstanding record of clinical trials in theBritish Journal of Dermatology

In the year that the British Journal of Dermatology (BJD) celebrates its 125th year of production, it is timely to look back at the journal's contribution to promoting and publishing randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs). Along with systematic reviews, RCTs are the cornerstones of evidence‐based decisions about treatment effectiveness for people with skin diseases.1 Since the first modern RCT of streptomycin for tuberculosis was published in 1948,2 RCTs and their principles of random allocation of participants and blinded assessment of outcomes have remained the study design most likely to minimize bias when assessing treatments. Most readers will be familiar with coming across trial reports in the BJD, but what may surprise many is that the BJD has published more trials than any other dermatology journal, whether one looks over the last 70 years or the last 10 years, as shown in Table 1. This is an outstanding record for a British journal.