Reporting guidelines are recommendations to help write up research clearly.
Your research will be used by people from different disciplines and backgrounds for decades to come. Reporting guidelines are community-created recommendations for describing what you did and what you found so that everyone can understand, repeat, apply, and synthesise your work. Although they recommend information to include in your manuscript, they don’t dictate how to order that information.
Most reporting guidelines consist of the full guidance (sometimes called an Explanation and Elaboration document) and a checklist. The full guidance provides detailed explanations and examples for each item, and the checklist allows you to demonstrate adherence to editors.
You can use reporting guidelines throughout your research process. However you use reporting guidelines, please cite them.
Writing manuscripts
Write confidently using a reporting guideline to quickly turn a blank page into a thorough and impactful manuscript.
Checking
Use a reporting checklist to demonstrate to an editor or peer reviewer that you have included everything. Many journals require completed checklists at submission.
Writing applications
Reporting guidelines can help you write funding applications, ethics applications, and protocols, but they won’t make design decisions for you!
Reporting guidelines are neither design nor quality appraisal tools.
Although reporting guidelines recommend information to include when writing up research, they do not mandate how to design research. Similarly, when reviewing literature, although you can use reporting guidelines to assess whether a manuscript is well reported, you cannot use them to appraise whether that study is well designed.
Key information
Reporting guideline acronym
Provided for
Systematic reviews of interventions.
Relevant URLs (full-text if available)
The full-text of this handbook is freely available from: Cochrane Handbook
PubMed ID
Downloads
Bibliographic reference
Commonly used reporting guidelines
| STROBE | Observational Studies |
| PRISMA | Systematic reviews of trials |
| PRISMA-P | Systematic review protocols |
| CONSORT | Randomised trials |
| SPIRIT | Randomised trial protocols |
| SRQR | Qualitative Research |
| CARE | Case Reports |
| STARD | Diagnostic studies |
| TRIPOD+AI | Prediction Models |
| ARRIVE | Animal Research |
| SQUIRE | Quality Improvement |
| CHEERS | Economic Evaluations |
| Search all |
Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.1 (updated September 2020). Cochrane, 2020.
Additional information
Language
English
Availability in additional languages
Study design
- Systematic reviews/Meta-analyses/Reviews/HTA/Overviews
Clinical area
- No clinical specialty specified
Applies to the whole report or to individual sections of the report?
- Whole report
Reporting guideline website URL
Previous versions of this guideline / Guideline history
Other
Other guidance available from the Cochrane Collaboration
Methodological expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR): Standards for the conduct and reporting of new Cochrane Intervention Reviews, reporting of protocols and the planning, conduct and reporting of updates. Full-text available from: MECIR guidance
Methodological expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR): Standards for the reporting of plain language summaries in new Cochrane Intervention Reviews 2013. Full-text available from: Plain language summaries (PDF)
The PRISMA flow diagram has been adapted for use in Cochrane systematic review updates. Further details are available in the article below:
Stovold E, Beecher D, Foxlee R, Noel-Storr A. Study flow diagrams in Cochrane systematic review updates: an adapted PRISMA flow diagram. Syst Rev. 2014 May 29;3:54. PMID: 24886533
Additional Information