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
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 |
Huo B, Collins G, Chartash D, Thirunavukarasu A, Flanagin A, Iorio A, Cacciamani G, Chen X, Liu N, Mathur P, Chan AW, Laine C, Pacella D, Berkwits M, Antoniou SA, Camaradou JC, Canfield C, Mittelman M, Feeney T, Loder E, Agha R, Saha A, Mayol J, Sunjaya A, Harvey H, Ng JY, McKechnie T, Lee Y, Verma N, Stiglic G, McCradden M, Ramji K, Boudreau V, Ortenzi M, Meerpohl J, Vandvik PO, Agoritsas T, Samuel D, Frankish H, Anderson M, Yao X, Loeb S, Lokker C, Liu X, Guallar E, Guyatt G. Reporting guideline for Chatbot Health Advice studies: the CHART statement.
This guideline was published simultaneously in 6 journals. You can read the guideline in any of these journals using the links below.
Annals of Family Medicine: PMID 40750305
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: PMID 40753040
BMC Medicine: PMID 40745595
BMJ Medicine: PMID 40761518
British Journal of Surgery: PMID 40747825
JAMA Network Open: PMID 40747871
Additional information
Language
English
Availability in additional languages
Study design
- Artificial intelligence/Machine learning studies
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
Additional Information