# Pay investigators for finishing and publishing trials, not for enrolling patients

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-trial-completion-bonus/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-trial-completion-bonus` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Trial sites are paid per patient recruited, so nobody is paid to finish the study or report the answer. Shift part of the payment to completion and publication within a year.

## Summary

Sponsors and public funders restructure site and investigator payments so that a meaningful share (for example 25%) is held back and paid on completion of follow-up, database lock and public results posting within twelve months of the primary completion date, with a further bonus for peer-reviewed publication of negative results. Academic centres pass this through to investigator research accounts. Trial non-reporting remains common years after completion, and academic trials in particular stall in analysis and writing because the incentive ends with the last patient.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Completion- and reporting-linked payments raise the share of trials with results posted within twelve months of primary completion from the current minority to above 80% at participating sites, and reduce the analysis-to-publication interval by at least six months.
- Rationale: Results reporting rose sharply where enforcement existed (the FDA Amendments Act compliance improved once penalties were publicised; the EU trials tracker shamed institutions into action). Money attached to the milestone is a stronger and cheaper lever than penalties.
- Proposed test: A public funder applies the payment structure to all trials in one funding round and compares reporting timeliness with the previous round.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: clinic

## Sources

- EU Trials Tracker: https://eu.trialstracker.net/

## Connected records

- collections: [ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/collections/clinicaltrials-gov/), [EU Clinical Trials Register / CTIS](https://onco.cc/collections/eudract-ctis/)
- ideas: [Funder bonuses for releasing results and data within six months, negatives included](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-open-results-bonus/), [Judge funding programme officers on burden alignment and trials completed](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-programme-officer-incentives/), [Promote academics for trials completed, data shared and findings replicated](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-academic-promotion-reform/)
- bottlenecks: [Failures are hidden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/), [Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-incentive-misalignment/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)

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