From Edinburgh to Bucharest for the EQUATOR “GoodReports” project

Report from Caroline Struthers, Education and Training Manager, UK EQUATOR Centre, Oxford

In September 2017 I was lucky enough to represent EQUATOR at a round table discussion during the LAVA-ESLAV-ECLAM conference on Reproducibility of Animal Studies in Edinburgh. All attendees were invited to say a few words about initiatives and achievements of their organisations in improving reporting, and how they could have a positive impact on transparency and reproducibility in animal studies. The group subsequently had a letter to the editor published in BMC Veterinary Research.

One of the EQUATOR projects I mentioned was our “GoodReports” project to develop a tool to embed the requirement and means to use and submit a reporting checklist into the journal submission system. On the strength of this, I was delighted to be invited to contribute an update on progress of GoodReports at the 14^th European Association of Science Editors Conference in Bucharest earlier this month. I presented alongside colleagues from The Lancet, Open Access Journal Publisher MDPI, Switzerland and Hasselt University, Belgium in the REWARD session on initiatives to help editors reduce waste in research.

A handout version of the presentation (PDF) with preliminary results of a pilot with BMJ Open is available. We will make the full results available as soon as we can. This will include a before and after comparison of manuscripts for completeness and adherence to reporting guidelines. You can access the GoodReports website here. Comments and suggestions for improvements are very welcome. We hope to conduct a randomised trial of the effectiveness of GoodReports in improving the quality of manuscript submissions in the near future. Watch this space!