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How to write a great research paper using reporting guidelines

Using the resources you find here will set you on the right road to writing a great research paper using reporting guidelines

When published, your article will start a new independent life. It will be read and critically appraised, and it may contribute to systematic reviews, inform clinical guidelines, and influence clinical practice.

Before you submit your paper to a journal, you need to consider whether the article will achieve its purpose:

  • Will a Cochrane reviewer be able to scrutinise your study’s methods to assess the risk of bias?
  • Would another researcher be able to replicate your experiment?
  • Can numerical results be extracted from your paper easily?
  • Have you provided enough detail about your intervention to allow its use in clinical practice?

The resources in this toolkit will help you achieve a long and useful life for your article by reporting it in the best way possible.

EQUATOR Library of Reporting Guidelines

The first step is to find a reporting guideline for your study. You might also want to supplement a common reporting guideline with any specific guidance for your clinical area or study type. We suggest visiting the EQUATOR Database of Reporting Guidelines.

This is a searchable database of all reporting guidelines. Use the drop-down menus to see all of the reporting guidelines and extensions for a study type. You can also search for guidelines written specifically for certain clinical specialties. The free-text search lets you search guidelines’ titles, associated keywords, and the bibliographic details of any related papers.

Entries in the database contain

  • bibliographic details of the reporting guideline

  • links to their PubMed entry

  • links to full text (though this will be dependent on your institutions agreement with the journal)

  • reporting guideline checklist (where available, subject to copyright)

  • links translations (where available)

  • any other resources (e.g., links to similar reporting guidelines)

Why are reporting guidelines so helpful?

The EQUATOR team has edited a textbook called Guidelines for Reporting Health Research: A User’s Manual. It explains why we need standardised reporting of important details in health research publications and how to use reporting guidelines. It also has chapters on the guidelines most commonly required by journals. You can read some sample chapters here:

Examples of good reporting

Once you have the right reporting guideline and know what items to report, it’s always a good idea to look at good examples for inspiration. Several guideline development groups have published articles with examples of good reporting for each item on their checklist.

Find examples of good reporting in:

Reporting medical research

An essential “How to…” article published in The International Journal of Clinical Practice by former EQUATOR members Iveta Simera and Doug Altman on scientific writing and the key principles of responsible research reporting.

A guide (PDF) to reporting guidelines relevant to implementation studies has been developed by researchers in the Centre for Implementation Science at King’s College London and King’s Improvement Science.

Authoraid annotated journal article

This resource on the Authoraid website presents a journal article from PLoS ONE with annotated comments on aspects of the scientific writing.

ICMJE Recommendations

Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations) are produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. They are intended primarily for use by authors who submit their work for publication to ICMJE member journals, although many non-ICMJE journals recommend their use.