Adherence to reporting guidelines and trial registration across transplantation journals

Abstract

Background: Biomedical research significantly affects patient outcomes and changes clinical care. Further, this research has the requirement of being the utmost quality for medical professionals in their practice. Reporting guidelines for all various study designs and the official registration of clinical trials both help reduce bias and promote transparency within methodologies. To date, no study has assessed surgical transplantation journals for their promotion or omission of reporting guidelines and clinical trial registration. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate these journals and categorize the instructions for authors surrounding the mention, recommendation, or requirement of reporting guidelines and trial registration.Methods: A total of 47 peer-reviewed transplantation clinical journals were eligible for analysis according to the Scopus CiteScore tool. Two investigators extracted the journals’ title, five-year impact factor, and 18 reporting guidelines in a masked, duplicate manner from each journal’s “Instructions for Authors” section. We also extracted data on whether journals required clinical trial registration. Finally, we emailed journals once every three weeks in order to allow journal editors the opportunity to clarify the publication types they accept. Journals that did not accept certain study designs we omitted from analysis with respect to that study design’s reporting guideline.Results: A total of 13 (13 of 47; 28%) transplantation journals mentioned the EQUATOR Network: an online resource of validated and developing reporting guidelines. Of the 47 journals examined, CONSORT was the most commonly mentioned guideline with 11 (11 of 47; 23%) journals requiring it and 19 (19 of 47; 40%) journals recommending it. The QUOROM guideline was never mentioned by any journal. Finally, 24 (24/47; 51%) required and 9 (9/47; 19%) recommended the clinical trial registration, totaling 33 (33/47; 70%) mentioning clinical trial registration