Keeping up as reporting guidelines change
Reporting guidance develops through new guidelines, revisions and extensions. Writers need to follow those changes and study relevant updates, rather than relying only on a book or a familiar checklist.
Continuous development and revised guidance
Medical-writing books remain static between periodically published editions, whereas guidelines develop continuously and their latest updates can be accessed when published. Writers preparing randomised-trial manuscripts were advised in 2010 to download CONSORT 2010 and study its changes, including its table and second box.
A replacement guideline can change which standard applies: in 2009, PRISMA superseded QUOROM for reporting meta-analyses, with a companion explanatory document and a dedicated website providing the materials. CONSORT had also expanded beyond its original scope, with an abstracts statement published in 2008 and seven official plus four unofficial extensions reported around the 2010 revision.
New guidance for specific research
Four additions to journal-article guidance were highlighted in 2009.
- STREGA for genetic-association studies.
- Manuscript-submission guidance for American Psychological Association journals.
- Reporting medical dispatch in emergency-medicine studies.
- Reporting evaluation studies in health informatics.
Four further publications highlighted in 2011 could be located by entering their identifiers in PubMed.
- GRIPS for genetic-risk-prediction studies: 21423587.
- An article on economic evaluation within randomised trials: 21474510.
- A second article on economic evaluation within randomised trials: 21482590.
- Reporting uncontrolled case series: 21163373.
By 2024, AI reporting guidance included CONSORT-AI, SPIRIT-AI and extensions for diagnostic and prognostic studies, with further extensions also available.