Where the reporting guidelines are collected
Reporting-guideline collections bring together guidance for different research designs and clinical areas, with tools and explanations that help writers use it. The EQUATOR Network provides an online collection, while a reference manual brings major guidelines together in book form.
The EQUATOR Network
EQUATOR stands for Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research. The initiative was established in 2006 and launched publicly in 2008. It promotes accurate, complete and transparent health research reporting to support reproducibility and usefulness. Its international work involves guideline developers, researchers and authors, journal editors, peer reviewers and research funders.
The network provides a free, searchable reporting-guideline library covering study types and clinical areas. Guidance can be specific to a study design, such as randomised trials or observational studies, or to a medical condition, such as response definitions for chronic myeloid leukaemia. Resources include examples of good reporting, guideline extensions, add-ons, translations and toolkits for research reports. The network also provides guidance on developing reporting guidelines, educational materials and training. Its writing resources include a scientific paper annotated with practical advice.
Specialty resources
EQUATOR Oncology was developed as the network's first specialist collection, funded by Cancer Research UK to support oncology researchers. In 2018, its resources covered four areas.
- Quality of reporting of randomised controlled trials in oncology.
- Statistical controversies in clinical research.
- Resources and references for oncology researchers.
- Oncology-related organisations.
Each section linked documents to their original sources. The collection included a current-awareness bulletin of links to publications and resources and a series of 20 articles in Annals of Oncology titled “Statistical controversies in clinical research”: four published in 2015, six in 2016 and ten in 2017. Most articles in that series concerned poor research reporting and authors' “beautification” practices.
A reference manual
Guidelines for Reporting Health Research: A User's Manual was published by Wiley Blackwell in 2014, edited by David Moher, Douglas Altman, Kenneth Schulz, Iveta Simera and Elizabeth Wager. Produced in association with the EQUATOR Network and with more than 60 contributors, it is aimed at authors, editors, peer reviewers and funders. Its four parts cover the background to reporting guidelines, individual guidelines, presentation and journal implementation.
| Part | Contents |
|---|---|
| 1: Chapters 1–6 | Reporting problems, including selective reporting, inadequate statistical tests, limits of peer review, deficiencies in published articles, conclusions drawn from insufficient data and effects on systematic reviews; guideline development and use; reporting versus conduct; and EQUATOR resources |
| 2: Chapters 7–24 | Study-type guidelines, including SPIRIT 2013; CONSORT for abstracts, the main statement and extensions for nonpharmacological treatments, pragmatic trials, cluster randomised trials, and noninferiority and equivalence trials; TREND; STROBE; STARD; SURGE; COREQ; SQUIRE; REMARK; and PRISMA, including abstract and equity-focused extensions |
| 3: Chapters 25–28 | Presentation of statistics through SAMPL, tables and figures, and clinical and laboratory images through the CLIP principles, including an example on documenting magnetic resonance images |
| 4: Chapter 29 | Coherent journal policies for implementing reporting guidelines, with an eight-step process based on experience at an international journal |
Many of the guideline chapters include checklist items alongside explanations of development, use and future directions, with critical discussion of merits and limitations.