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Reporting health and medical research
  1. Harrison J Hansford1,2,
  2. Georgia C Richards3,
  3. Matthew J Page4,
  4. Melissa K Sharp5,
  5. Hopin Lee6,7,
  6. Aidan G Cashin1,2
  1. 1Centre for Pain IMPACT, Neuroscience Research Australia, Randwick, New South Wales, Australia
  2. 2School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  3. 3Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  4. 4Methods in Evidence Synthesis Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  5. 5Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland
  6. 6Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
  7. 7IQVIA, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Aidan G Cashin, School of Health Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; a.cashin{at}neura.edu.au

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjebm-2023-112563

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    The use of the best available evidence to inform patient care in evidence-based medicine is reliant on the accurate, complete and transparent reporting of health and medical research. Without a complete and transparent account of what was done and what was found during a research study, findings cannot be fully understood, replicated, assessed for validity and applicability, and used to inform clinical and policy decisions.

    For over 50 years, problems of incomplete and poor reporting of research have been widely documented across health and medical research.1–3 Unusable research reports contribute to avoidable research waste4 through the inability to appraise and synthesise research and can detrimentally impact patient care through incorrect implementation of research findings.5 Because of this, complete and transparent reporting of research is a researcher’s moral and ethical responsibility to maximise the usefulness and positive impact of their research.6 Our objective in this article is to provide an overview of reporting guidelines and other key tools available to increase transparent reporting and to outline relevant challenges and potential solutions to their use by research stakeholders.

    What are reporting guidelines

    Reporting guidelines aim to improve the accuracy, completeness and transparency of health and medical research publications (box 1). Typically developed using explicit methods (eg, Delphi study and consensus meeting),7 a reporting guideline is a simple, structured tool (usually a checklist) or explicit text that guides researchers in reporting a specific type of research. Most reporting guidelines specify the minimum information (in the format of ‘reporting items’) to be included for a particular research study type, allowing readers to get a complete and transparent account of what was done and what was found during a research study. Table 1 presents relevant reporting guidelines and extensions available for the main study designs.

    Box 1

    : Summary of reporting guidelines in health and medical research

    What: A checklist, flow diagram or explicit text developed …

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @HJHansford, @Richards_G_C, @AidanCashin

    • Contributors AGC, GCR and HL conceptualised the paper. All authors contributed to data interpretation. HJH and AGC wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors provided substantive feedback on the manuscript and have read and approved the final version. AGC is the guarantor and attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests HJH was supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Postgraduate Scholarship, a PhD Top-Up Scholarship from Neuroscience Research Australia and was a Neuroscience Research Australia PhD Pearl sponsored by Sandra Salteri. GCR has a casual contract at the University of Oxford to teach and supervise research and is the Director of a Limited Company that is independently contracted to work as an Epidemiologist in the private sector. GCR is an Associate Editor of BMJ Evidence Based Medicine. AGC was financially supported by an Australian Government Investigator Grant. HJH, HL and AGC are leading the development of a reporting guideline for studies emulating a target trial (TARGET). HL and AGC developed A Guideline for Reporting Mediation Analyses (AGReMA). MJP co-led the development of the PRISMA 2020 statement. MKS is supported by a Health Research Board (HRB) Applying Research Into Policy and Practice (ARPP-2023-010). She was previously financially supported by a European Commission (grant: 676207) for her PhD focused on reporting guidelines (STROBE). All other authors declare no competing interests.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.