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
REFLECT
Provided for
Reporting randomised controlled trials for livestock and food safety
Relevant URLs (full-text if available)
The REFLECT statement 22-item checklist is available to download from the Meridian Network website.
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 |
O’Connor AM, Sargeant JM, Gardner IA, Dickson JS, Torrence ME, Consensus Meeting Participants, Dewey CE, Dohoo IR, Evans RB, Gray JT, Greiner M, Keefe G, Lefebvre SL, Morley PS, Ramirez A, Sischo W, Smith DR, Snedeker K, Sofos J, Ward MP, Wills R. The REFLECT statement: methods and processes of creating reporting guidelines for randomized controlled trials for livestock and food safety by modifying the CONSORT statement.
This guideline was published simultaneously in 4 journals. You can read the guideline in any of these journals using the links below.
Zoonoses Public Health. 2010;57(2):95-104. PMID: 20070653
J Food Prot. 2010;73(1):132-139. PMID: 20051216
J Vet Intern Med. 2010;24(1):57-64. PMID: 20002546
Prev Vet Med. 2010;93(1):11-18. PMID: 19926151
Additional information
Language
English
Availability in additional languages
The REFLECT statement checklist is available to download in Spanish and French from the Meridian Network website.
Visit our translations page to find out what other reporting guidelines are available in languages other than English: reporting guideline translations
Study design
- No study design specified
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