Helping editors, peer reviewers and authors improve the clarity, completeness and transparency of reporting health research

David Moher¹^,2 , Iveta Simera³ , Kenneth F Schulz⁴ , John Hoey⁵ and Douglas G Altman³

¹Chalmers Research Group, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada

²Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

³Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

⁴Family Health International, Durham, NC, USA

⁵Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada

author email corresponding author email

BMC Medicine 2008, 6:13doi:10.1186/1741-7015-6-13


Published:	16 June 2008

Abstract

Inadequate reporting is problematic for several reasons. If authors do not provide sufficient details concerning the conduct of their study, readers are left with an incomplete picture of what was done. As such, they are not able to judge the merits of the results and interpret them. The EQUATOR Network is a new initiative aimed at improving the clarity and transparency of reporting health research.