Resources for reporting guidelines developers

 Development of reporting guidelines is a complex process that does not finish with the guideline publication. The following resources highlight some of the important aspects of this process:


Development of reporting guidelines

At present, there is no universally accepted handbook on how to develop reporting guidelines.

The EQUATOR Network has published a paper 'Guidance for Developers of Health Research Reporting Guideline' which summarises their extensive experience in the development of reporting guidelines and offers practical recommendations how to tackle the development of a new guideline or extend and update the existing one.

Moher D, Schulz KF, Simera I, Altman DG (2010) Guidance for Developers of Health Research Reporting Guidelines. PLoS Med 7(2): e1000217.(Full text; EQUATOR News)

Collection of papers describing the methods and experience of authors of some of the existing guidelines (for references click here).


Considerations for reporting guideline publication 

Published reporting guidelines need to be easily accessible to their users. We strongly encourage publishing as an open access article or in the open access journal.

Recently, some journals have created special sections for publishing guidelines and methods papers. Examples include:


Copyright and fair use

Many issues can arise after your guideline is published. Find out more how to deal with them.

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This page is still under development.

In the near future this section will bring you the methodology resources on how to develop reporting guidelines, advice on how to handle practical issues like budgeting for the project or dealing with copyright and translation issues, experience of other reporting guidelines developers, and other relevant topics.

We are committed to build a useful resource point and would be grateful to hear from you about what information you would find useful to have here (please email Iveta Simera or post your comment on our discussion forum).

We aim to create an open network of reporting guideline developers and initiate mutual collaboration. The Network will provide support in the development and maintenance of existing and new reporting guidelines. There are no obligations or fees for joining the network.

We also plan to set up a database of ongoing projects aiming at developing reporting guidance. By contacting us and sharing your intentions you might prevent duplicity of work or gain new collaborators.

Page last edited: 30 March 2012