# Metadata Lifespans

In data quality assessment, does the rate at which trial records become stale differ between African and European registrations on ClinicalTrials.gov? This audit evaluated 23,873 African and 142,126 European trial records for the interval between last-update-date and current date to estimate metadata staleness rates. Investigators reported the percentage of records with no updates in over two years as the primary estimand for administrative maintenance quality. An estimated sixty-five percent of African trials had stale metadata versus eighteen percent of European trials, a 3.6-fold gap in administrative currency. Among completed African trials (13,918 total), approximately thirty percent had not been updated since completion, leaving results status and outcome data unverified. Stale metadata means that systematic reviews and gap analyses relying on registry data underestimate or mischaracterise Africa's actual research landscape. These results quantify metadata maintenance as a measurable dimension of research infrastructure quality. Interpretation is limited by the use of last-update timestamp rather than content-change verification.

## References

1. Alemayehu C, et al. "Behind the mask of the African clinical trials landscape." Trials. 2018;19:519.
2. Drain PK, et al. "Global migration of clinical trials." Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2018;17:765-766.

## Note Block

- Type: research
- App: https://mahmood726-cyber.github.io/africa-e156-students/geographic-equity/dashboards/angle-1_metadata-lifespans.html
- Code: https://github.com/mahmood726-cyber/africa-e156-students/blob/master/geographic-equity/code/angle-1-metadata-lifespans.py
- Data: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2
- Date: 2026-04-05