UK EQUATOR Centre, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, NDORMS, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK.
BMC Med Res Methodol. 2021 Oct 17;21(1):217. doi: 10.1186/s12874-021-01402-x.
Th EQUATOR Network improves the quality and transparency in health research, primarily by promoting awareness and use of reporting guidelines. In 2018, the UK EQUATOR Centre launched GoodReports.org , a website that helps authors find and use reporting guidelines. This paper describes the tool's development so far. We describe user experience and behaviour of using GoodReports.org both inside and outside a journal manuscript submission process. We intend to use our findings to inform future development and testing of the tool.
We conducted a survey to collect data on user experience of the GoodReports website. We cross-checked a random sample of 100 manuscripts submitted to a partner journal to describe the level of agreement between the tool's checklist recommendation and what we would have recommended. We compared the proportion of authors submitting a completed reporting checklist alongside their manuscripts between groups exposed or not exposed to the GoodReports tool. We also conducted a study comparing completeness of reporting of manuscript text before an author received a reporting guideline recommendation from GoodReports.org with the completeness of the text subsequently submitted to a partner journal.
Seventy percent (423/599) of survey respondents rated GoodReports 8 or more out of 10 for usefulness, and 74% (198/267) said they had made changes to their manuscript after using the website. We agreed with the GoodReports reporting guideline recommendation in 84% (72/86) of cases. Of authors who completed the guideline finder questionnaire, 14% (10/69) failed to submit a completed checklist compared to 30% (41/136) who did not use the tool. Of the 69 authors who received a GoodReports reporting guideline recommendation, 20 manuscript pairs could be reviewed before and after use of GoodReports. Five included more information in their methods section after exposure to GoodReports. On average, authors reported 57% of necessary reporting items before completing a checklist on GoodReports.org and 60% after.
The data suggest that reporting guidance is needed early in the writing process, not at submission stage. We are developing GoodReports by adding more reporting guidelines and by creating editable article templates. We will test whether GoodReports users write more complete study reports in a randomised trial targeting researchers starting to write health research articles.
EQUATOR 网络通过提高对报告规范的认识和使用，主要提高了健康研究的质量和透明度。2018 年，英国 EQUATOR 中心推出了 GoodReports.org，这是一个帮助作者查找和使用报告规范的网站。本文描述了该工具迄今为止的开发情况。我们描述了在期刊稿件提交过程内外使用 GoodReports.org 的用户体验和行为。我们打算利用研究结果为该工具的未来开发和测试提供信息。
我们进行了一项调查，以收集有关 GoodReports 网站用户体验的数据。我们交叉检查了向合作伙伴期刊提交的 100 篇随机样本手稿，以描述工具检查表推荐与我们推荐之间的一致性。我们比较了在使用 GoodReports 工具的情况下和未使用该工具的情况下，有多少作者在提交稿件的同时提交了完整的报告检查表。我们还进行了一项研究，比较了作者在收到 GoodReports.org 报告指南建议之前对稿件文本的报告完整性与随后提交给合作伙伴期刊的文本的完整性。
70%（423/599）的调查受访者对 GoodReports 的有用性评分在 8 分或 8 分以上，74%（198/267）的受访者表示在使用该网站后对稿件进行了修改。在 84%（72/86）的情况下，我们同意 GoodReports 报告规范的建议。在完成指南查找问卷的作者中，14%（10/69）没有提交完整的检查表，而没有使用该工具的作者有 30%（41/136）。在收到 GoodReports 报告指南建议的 69 位作者中，有 20 对稿件可以在使用 GoodReports 之前和之后进行审查。在接触 GoodReports 之后，有 5 篇稿件在方法部分增加了更多信息。平均而言，作者在完成 GoodReports.org 上的检查表之前报告了 57%的必要报告项目，之后报告了 60%。
数据表明，报告指南需要在写作过程的早期提供，而不是在提交阶段。我们正在通过添加更多报告规范和创建可编辑的文章模板来开发 GoodReports。我们将通过一项针对开始撰写健康研究文章的研究人员的随机试验来测试 GoodReports 用户是否能写出更完整的研究报告。
