Background: There is evidence that direct journal endorsement of reporting guidelines can lead to important
improvements in the quality and reliability of the published research. However, over the last 20 years, there has
been a proliferation of reporting guidelines for different study designs, making it impractical for a journal to
explicitly endorse them all. The objective of this study was to investigate whether a decision tree tool made
available during the submission process facilitates author identification of the relevant reporting guideline.
Methods: This was a prospective 14-week before–after study across four speciality medical research journals. During
the submission process, authors were prompted to follow the relevant reporting guideline from the EQUATOR Network
and asked to confirm that they followed the guideline (‘before’). After 7 weeks, this prompt was updated to include a
direct link to the decision-tree tool and an additional prompt for those authors who stated that ‘no guidelines were
applicable’ (‘after’). For each article submitted, the authors’ response, what guideline they followed (if any) and what
reporting guideline they should have followed (including none relevant) were recorded.
Results: Overall, 590 manuscripts were included in this analysis—300 in the before cohort and 290 in the after. There
were relevant reporting guidelines for 75% of manuscripts in each group; STROBE was the most commonly applicable
reporting guideline, relevant for 35% (n = 106) and 37% (n = 106) of manuscripts, respectively. Use of the tool was
associated with an 8.4% improvement in the number of authors correctly identifying the relevant reporting guideline
for their study (p < 0.0001), a 14% reduction in the number of authors incorrectly stating that there were no relevant
reporting guidelines (p < 0.0001), and a 1.7% reduction in authors choosing a guideline (p = 0.10). However, the ‘after’
cohort also saw a significant increase in the number of authors stating that there were relevant reporting guidelines for
their study, but not specifying which (34 vs 29%; p = 0.04).
Conclusion: This study suggests that use of a decision-tree tool during submission of a manuscript is associated with
improved author identification of the relevant reporting guidelines for their study type; however, the majority
of authors still failed to correctly identify the relevant guidelines.

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• Simple decision-tree tool to facilitate author identification of reporting guidelines during submission: a before–after study