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Category: Project

Description: There is evidence that, although most reputable medical journals endorse the use of reporting guidelines, authors still find it difficult to identify the most appropriate one and use it effectively to improve the completeness of their article. We have developed an online tool called GoodReports (www.goodreports.org) to help researchers find and use reporting guidelines. The tool currently helps researchers identify the most appropriate single reporting guideline (e.g., CONSORT, STROBE, or PRISMA) and delivers an online, editable checklist that can also be downloaded. The checklist can be annotated to indicate where in the manuscript each item has been reported, then submitted to a journal alongside an article manuscript. However, pilot data collected as part of a collaboration with a medical journal indicated that when a checklist was delivered immediately before submission, it did not lead to authors making significant additions to their manuscript. Therefore, we plan to 1. Develop the functionality of the GoodReports tool to deliver an article template to be used during writing. 2. Combine items from more than one reporting guideline into a single article template, where appropriate. 3. Conduct a randomized trial to test whether article templates delivered early in the writing process result in more complete reporting of health research articles.