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
PRISMA 2020
Provided for
Reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
Relevant URLs (full-text if available)
The PRISMA 2020 Statement and Explanation and Elaboration document are available at: https://www.prisma-statement.org/prisma-2020
All versions (including a Shiny App) of the PRISMA 2020 checklist are available at: https://www.prisma-statement.org/prisma-2020-checklist
All versions (including a Shiny App) of the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram are available (for both new and updated systematic reviews) at: https://www.prisma-statement.org/prisma-2020-flow-diagram
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 |
Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, Shamseer L, Tetzlaff JM, Akl EA, Brennan SE, Chou R, Glanville J, Grimshaw JM, Hróbjartsson A, Lalu MM, Li T, Loder EW, Mayo-Wilson E, McDonald S, McGuinness LA, Stewart LA, Thomas J, Tricco AC, Welch VA, Whiting P, Moher D. The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews.
This guideline was published simultaneously in 5 journals. You can read the guideline in any of these journals using the links below.
PLoS Med. 2021;18(3):e1003583. PMID: 33780438
BMJ 2021;372:n71. PMID: 33782057
Int J Surg. 2021:105906. PMID: 33789826
J Clin Epidemiol. 2021:S0895-4356(21)00073-1. PMID: 33789819
Syst Rev. 2021;10(1):89. PMID: 33781348
Additional information
Language
English
Availability in additional languages
PRISMA 2020 translations
The PRISMA 2020 Statement is available in Italian (PDF), Croation (PDF), Greek (PDF), Japanese (PDF), Brazilian Portuguese (PDF), and Spanish (PDF).
The PRISMA 2020 Checklist is available in Chinese Simplified (Word), Chinese Traditional (PDF), French (Word), Greek (PDF), Japanese (PDF), Korean (Word), European Portuguese (Word), and Turkish (PDF).
The PRISMA 2020 for Abstracts Checklist is available in Chinese Simplified (Word), Chinese Traditional (PDF), Japanese (PDF), Korean (Word), European Portuguese (Word) and Turkish (PDF).
Additional translations (including flow diagrams) are available at https://www.prisma-statement.org/translations
PRISMA 2009 translations
A full-text copy of the PRISMA 2009 Statement is available in German (PDF), Italian (PDF) and Portuguese (PDF).
The PRISMA 2009 checklist is available in Korean (PDF), Portuguese (PDF), Russian (PDF), German (PDF), Japanese (PDF), Turkish (PDF) and Italian (PDF).
The PRISMA 2009 flow diagram is available in French (PDF), German (PDF), Italian (PDF), Korean (PDF), Russian (PDF), Japanese (PDF), Turkish (PDF) and Portuguese (PDF).
The PRISMA 2009 Explanation and Elaboration document is available in Italian (PDF). \
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
PRISMA 2009
QUOROM guideline (PRISMA replaces QUOROM)
Other
An online fillable PRISMA 2020 checklist is also available via the GoodReports website at https://www.goodreports.org/reporting-checklists/prisma/.
Additional Information
Read the protocol for the PRISMA Statement update.
Read about the the processes used to update the PRISMA 2009 statement:
Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, Shamseer L, Tetzlaff JM, Moher D. Updating guidance for reporting systematic reviews: development of the PRISMA 2020 statement. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021;134:103-112. PMID: 33577987
Guidance for developing protocols for systematic reviews and meta-analyses is provided in the PRISMA-P Statement. For further details please visit: PRISMA-P Statement