Endorsement of RGs by journals and EQUATOR

Erik raises an important point; below we provide some background to the problem and what we are trying to do about it.

The EQUATOR Network started with a basic aim to collate all available reporting guidelines into one central portal to make their identification and use easier; the information on the website clearly states how we identified guidelines and what selection criteria we used.
During this process we realised that the methodology used for the development of these guidelines vary quite considerably. This creates a potentially confusing situation for editors who need to decide which guidelines to recommend to their authors to follow.
The members of the EQUATOR Network have initiated a couple of projects aiming to improve this situation:
1. We are currently working on a paper documenting points to consider in developing a reporting guideline.
2. We are conducting a systematic review to identify and characterize reporting guidelines. As part of this review we are evaluating which reporting guidelines have used the points above as part of their reporting guidelines.
3. We hope both of these efforts will help inform the development of the critical appraisal tool.
We plan to assess important characteristics of available reporting guidelines and publish this assessment on the website to inform editors' decision making process. This will obviously take some time, meanwhile editors need to make their own assessment based on the information on the guideline development process provided in the guideline paper; e.g. information about guideline development group, methods of searching and synthesizing the evidence, presence of wider consultation process, etc. indicates how robust the development process was.

Any views and comments most welcome.

Posted by Iveta Simera & David Moher