Registry literacy · reviewed 2026-08-17
How to read a ClinicalTrials.gov record
What NCT, Overall Status, Phase, Eligibility, and Contacts mean on an official ClinicalTrials.gov study record. Not medical advice.
The NCT number is the ID
Every registered study has an NCT identifier. Quote it when you call a site, email a coordinator, or compare two web pages. If two articles describe “a new cancer trial” without an NCT number, you cannot tell whether they mean the same study.
Status is a sponsor update, not a live waitlist
Overall Status (Recruiting, Active not recruiting, Completed, and others) is what the sponsor last posted. Sites can pause independently. Always ask the contact: “Is this location still taking new participants for NCT…?”
Brief Title vs Official Title
Brief Title is the short name. Official Title is often longer and more technical. PlainTrials keeps both. The official title is not “more true”; it is the registry’s unrewritten heading.
Eligibility is a screening script, not a verdict
Inclusion and exclusion criteria are written for investigators. Meeting them on paper still requires labs, imaging, and an informed-consent visit. Missing a criterion on the public page usually means the site will say no — but only the site can say yes.
Locations and contacts
A city on the record means the sponsor listed a site there. It does not mean that site has an opening this week. Contacts are only those the sponsor published. We copy them; we do not scrape hospital directories.