How many research protocols make it to publication

I have just caught up with this paper from the BMJ at the beginning of this month. It looked at protocols approved by French research ethics committees, and followed them through to see if they were published or not. 86 percent of these studies were completed, but only 28 percent were published. Those with inconclusive results were less likely to be published than those that had confirmatory results.

Three researchers from Lyon carried out the research, which is published at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/331/7507/19