Reporting Guidelines & Clinical Trials Registration
To ensure a high and consistent quality of research reporting, original research articles must contain sufficient information to allow readers to understand how a study was designed and conducted. For review articles, systematic or narrative, readers should be informed of the rationale and details behind the literature search strategy.
To achieve this goal, Archives requires that authors upload a completed checklist for the appropriate reporting guideline during original submission. Taking the time to ensure your manuscript addresses basic reporting prerequisites will greatly improve your manuscript, and enhance the likelihood of publication. These checklists serve as a guide for the editors and reviewers as they evaluate your paper.
The EQUATOR Network is an excellent resource for key reporting guidelines, checklists, and flow diagrams. These guidelines should be especially useful for Archives’ authors.
Click on the checklist that applies to your manuscript, download it to your computer, fill it out electronically, “save as,” and upload it with your manuscript when you submit. Links to mandatory flow diagrams also are provided.
- Randomized Controlled Trials – CONSORT – Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials
- Observational Studies – STROBE – Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology
- Systematic Review of Controlled Trials – PRISMA – Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
- Study of Diagnostic Accuracy/Assessment Scale – STARD – Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies
- Case Reports – CARE – for case reports
During the submission process when you are prompted to state which checklist is needed, please check the appropriate box for your manuscript or check Not Applicable if your paper is a Commentary, Letter to the Editor, etc. Then the system will allow you to select the file type and upload the appropriate checklist and flow diagram.
We strongly suggest that all authors begin working with these checklists so that they become a routine part of the manuscript development and submission process.
The Archives is also now requiring that all manuscripts reporting clinical trials must be registered before submission. For trials that are underway and are already enrolling patients, registration will be retrospective. This is an interim step that will end 1 January 2017. At that time, the Archives will only consider clinical trials that have been registered before the first patient is enrolled.
