How to improve the quality of research reporting?

摘要

At the recent AOGS editorial board meeting one of the topics discussed was how the quality of research reporting can be further improved in AOGS. During the last few years substantial evidence has demontrated that too often good research evidence is underminded by poor quality reporting. Instead of being useful in clinical practice or in health policy making, a large proportion of published studies are not useful, may be misleading, wasteful of scarce resources and potentially harmful. In 2008 the EQUATOR Network was officially launched. The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) network is an international initiative that seeks to improve reliability and value of medical research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting of research studies. One of the most powerful results of the network is the all-in-one homepage www. equator-network.org that is constantly updated and under development. This website should be a well known and used resource for authors, reviewers and editors. The home page contains a resource center that publishes all reporting guidelines. Guidelines for reporting health research are important tools to improve the quality of published studies. They specify a minimum set of items needed for a complete and clear account of study methods and subsequent findings. Adherence to reporting guidelines improves the accuracy and transparency of publications. In many ways reporting guidelines are checklists of important items that ought to be carried out for achieving not only an adequate study design, but also reporting the study in a transparent and correct way. In this context it is interesting to remember that in other fields such checklists have also proven to be of great benefit. For example, an evaluation of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist showed that its implementation was associated with a 47% reduction in rates of death and a 36% reduction of inpatient complications after surgery. Examples of the most frequently used reporting guidelines include: