Reporting Guidelines

Reporting guidelines are checklists, flow diagrams, or structured-text tools that specify the minimum set of information authors must include when writing up a specific type of study, so that readers, peer reviewers, and editors can judge what was done and trust that nothing material has been left out. The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network, an international initiative founded in 2006 and based at the University of Oxford's Centre for Statistics in Medicine (NDORMS), is the field's central clearinghouse: it defines a reporting guideline as a checklist, flow diagram, or structured text developed using an explicit, documented consensus methodology to guide authors in reporting a specific type of research, and it maintains a searchable library of several hundred such guidelines spanning study designs, specialties, and report sections.A reporting guideline is not a methodological standard. It does not tell an investigator how to design a trial, calculate a sample size, randomize participants, or run an assay -- that is the job of methodological/conduct standards such as ICH Good Clinical Practice, CIOMS guidance, or a funder's data-collection protocol. Nor is a reporting guideline a critical-appraisal or risk-of-bias tool -- it does not score how well a study was conducted (that is the role of instruments such as the Cochrane risk-of-bias tools). A reporting guideline answers a narrower, prior question: given that the study was conducted a particular way, has the write-up disclosed enough about it -- the eligibility criteria, the randomization method, the funding source, the flow of participants -- for a reader to evaluate and, ideally, reproduce the work? An author can follow a reporting guideline to the letter while having run a methodologically weak study, and a well-conducted study can still be reported so incompletely that a reader cannot tell.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 23 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
PRISMA 2020 (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) -- a 27-item checklist plus flow diagram for systematic reviews and meta-analyses; see the CASRAI terms for <a href='/dictionary/term/prisma-2020'>PRISMA 2020</a> and the <a href='/dictionary/term/prisma-flow-diagram'>PRISMA flow diagram</a>.
Is an instance
CONSORT 2010 -- the reporting guideline for randomized controlled trials, requiring disclosure of randomization method, allocation concealment, blinding, and participant flow; see <a href='/dictionary/term/consort-2010'>CONSORT 2010</a>.
Is an instance
STROBE -- the reporting guideline for observational studies (cohort, case-control, cross-sectional); see <a href='/dictionary/term/strobe'>STROBE</a>.
Is an instance
ARRIVE 2.0 -- the reporting guideline for in vivo animal research, covering sample-size justification, randomization, and blinding in animal experiments; see <a href='/dictionary/term/arrive-2-0'>ARRIVE 2.0</a>.
Is an instance
CARE -- the reporting guideline for clinical case reports; see <a href='/dictionary/term/care-case-report-guidelines'>CARE Case Report Guidelines</a>.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
ICH Good Clinical Practice (GCP) is a conduct/methodological standard governing how a clinical trial must be designed, monitored, and documented -- not a reporting guideline for how the resulting paper should be written.
Not an instance
The Cochrane risk-of-bias tools evaluate the internal validity of a study's design and execution; they judge study quality rather than prescribe what a manuscript must disclose, so they are critical-appraisal instruments, not reporting guidelines, even though PRISMA-compliant systematic reviews typically use both.
Not an instance
A journal's general author-instructions page (word limits, reference style, figure formatting) is a house style requirement, not a reporting guideline -- it is not built through the consensus, evidence-based development methodology EQUATOR requires for inclusion in its library.

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Reporting Guidelines"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/reporting-guidelines" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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  "name": "Reporting Guidelines",
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  "description": "<p><strong>Reporting guidelines</strong> are checklists, flow diagrams, or structured-text tools that specify the minimum set of information authors must include when writing up a specific type of study, so that readers, peer reviewers, and editors can judge what was done and trust that nothing material has been left out. The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network, an international initiative founded in 2006 and based at the University of Oxford's Centre for Statistics in Medicine (NDORMS), is the field's central clearinghouse: it defines a reporting guideline as a checklist, flow diagram, or structured text developed using an explicit, documented consensus methodology to guide authors in reporting a specific type of research, and it maintains a searchable library of several hundred such guidelines spanning study designs, specialties, and report sections.</p><p>A reporting guideline is not a methodological standard. It does not tell an investigator how to design a trial, calculate a sample size, randomize participants, or run an assay -- that is the job of methodological/conduct standards such as ICH Good Clinical Practice, CIOMS guidance, or a funder's data-collection protocol. Nor is a reporting guideline a critical-appraisal or risk-of-bias tool -- it does not score how well a study was conducted (that is the role of instruments such as the Cochrane risk-of-bias tools). A reporting guideline answers a narrower, prior question: <em>given that the study was conducted a particular way, has the write-up disclosed enough about it -- the eligibility criteria, the randomization method, the funding source, the flow of participants -- for a reader to evaluate and, ideally, reproduce the work?</em> An author can follow a reporting guideline to the letter while having run a methodologically weak study, and a well-conducted study can still be reported so incompletely that a reader cannot tell.</p>",
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  "dateModified": "2026-07-23T09:46:17",
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