Han SeungHye, Olonisakin Tolani F, Pribis John P, Zupetic Jill, Yoon Joo Heung, Holleran Kyle M, Jeong Kwonho, Shaikh Nader, Rubio Doris M, Lee Janet S
Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Integrative Molecular and Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 Sep 13;12(9):e0183591. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183591. eCollection 2017.
Irreproducibility of preclinical biomedical research has gained recent attention. It is suggested that requiring authors to complete a checklist at the time of manuscript submission would improve the quality and transparency of scientific reporting, and ultimately enhance reproducibility. Whether a checklist enhances quality and transparency in reporting preclinical animal studies, however, has not been empirically studied. Here we searched two highly cited life science journals, one that requires a checklist at submission (Nature) and one that does not (Cell), to identify in vivo animal studies. After screening 943 articles, a total of 80 articles were identified in 2013 (pre-checklist) and 2015 (post-checklist), and included for the detailed evaluation of reporting methodological and analytical information. We compared the quality of reporting preclinical animal studies between the two journals, accounting for differences between journals and changes over time in reporting. We find that reporting of randomization, blinding, and sample-size estimation significantly improved when comparing Nature to Cell from 2013 to 2015, likely due to implementation of a checklist. Specifically, improvement in reporting of the three methodological information was at least three times greater when a mandatory checklist was implemented than when it was not. Reporting the sex of animals and the number of independent experiments performed also improved from 2013 to 2015, likely from factors not related to a checklist. Our study demonstrates that completing a checklist at manuscript submission is associated with improved reporting of key methodological information in preclinical animal studies.
临床前生物医学研究的不可重复性最近受到了关注。有人提出，要求作者在稿件提交时完成一份清单，将提高科学报告的质量和透明度，并最终提高可重复性。然而，一份清单是否能提高临床前动物研究报告的质量和透明度，尚未得到实证研究。在这里，我们搜索了两份高引用率的生命科学期刊，一份在投稿时要求清单（《自然》），另一份不要求（《细胞》），以识别体内动物研究。在筛选了943篇文章后，2013年（清单前）和2015年（清单后）共识别出80篇文章，并纳入对报告方法和分析信息的详细评估。我们比较了这两份期刊在临床前动物研究报告方面的质量，同时考虑了期刊之间的差异以及报告随时间的变化。我们发现，从2013年到2015年，将《自然》与《细胞》进行比较时，随机化、盲法和样本量估计的报告有显著改善，这可能是由于实施了清单。具体而言，在实施强制性清单时，这三项方法信息的报告改善至少是未实施时的三倍。动物性别和独立实验数量的报告从2013年到2015年也有所改善，这可能是由于与清单无关的因素。我们的研究表明，在稿件提交时完成一份清单与临床前动物研究中关键方法信息的报告改善有关。
