I suppose it depends on which field you are in. If its new interventions or something with public interest, observational studies may be thought of as a pilot for later controlled studies. You won't get it published in high ranked journals, but there are a huge amount of journals out there in every field.

Best

John kåre

See for example this observational study with a couple of articles

Article Quality of life improved following in-patient substance use ...

Article Improved drug-use patterns at 6 months post-discharge from i...

both published in quite decent journals.

Since coerced treatment for substance use has not been evaluated before here in Norway (and it's unethical to do an RCT about it), an observational study was the best option we had.

Best

Jk

Dear Jakub,

of course it is easier to publish a randomized-controlled study. But there are some other quality characteristics:

- large sample size

- good and complete description of the methods

- good performed statistical analyses

- interesting questions / endpoints and clear study results

- very new results of an interesting new and current topic

I think, you can manage to publish the study!

Best regards

Tanja