“perhaps FDA-sponsored journal that is specifically and exclusively dedicated to publishing full trial design and results papers.”
Independent peer-reviewed journals can’t, and won’t, publish everything due to the effect it would have on their Impact Factor (IF). The IF is generated by how often their publication is cited in other peer-reviewed publications.
Also, if a journal publishes a lot of irrelevant, boring, or rehashed data (resulting in a low IF), authors are reluctant to submit because publishing in such a journal holds little prestige.
I agree, and this is actually the point I'm trying to make. A lot of the data that doesn't get published winds up this way because it's not that exciting, not because of a conspiracy to suppress it. This is especially true for negative data. That's why I think it would be helpful for the FDA to set up a medium for the publication of all major clinical trial data. It doesn't even have to be a print version. It could just be an on-line clearing house for clinical trial results. They could set it up in such a way that wouldn't preclude data from being published elsewhere first, if done in a specific time frame (maybe within 3 years after the trial ends). It would be required that when you receive an IND from the FDA and approval to go forward with a drug trial you agree to submit the full data set to the FDA for publication/public distribution.