Verified against primary or official sources on 2026-07-23. The dated evidence record is assets/source_ledger.csv; the machine-readable selector catalog is assets/reporting_guidelines.json.
A reporting guideline identifies information that should be reported so readers can understand and appraise a study. It is not, by itself:
Checklist completion must never be converted automatically into a quality score. A fully reported study can have serious design problems; an incompletely reported study may be impossible to assess. Record missing information as a reporting gap, then separately assess any design, conduct, analysis, reproducibility, or ethics concern using appropriate evidence and expertise.
Use the guideline’s current statement together with its explanation and elaboration. Check applicable extensions and the target venue’s instructions. Do not copy checklist wording into a review when a specific, contextual comment is more useful.
reported, partly_reported, not_reported, not_applicable, or not_assessed.not_applicable; do not treat it as a defect.Run:
python3 scripts/select_reporting_guidelines.py \
assets/study_profile_template.json \
--coverage assets/reporting_checklist_template.csv
The bundled catalog is a dated aid, not a live registry. Consult the EQUATOR Network and official guideline site when the study type is unclear or a newer extension may apply.
Check registration, protocol and statistical analysis plan consistency, allocation, participant flow, outcomes and harms, effect estimates and uncertainty, protocol changes, data sharing, conflicts, and patient/public involvement where applicable.
Official sources: CONSORT–SPIRIT and the CONSORT 2025 statement.
Compare the protocol with registration, statistical analysis plan, ethics records, amendments, and any completed-trial report. Explicitly stated non-applicability with rationale is not missing reporting.
Official sources: CONSORT–SPIRIT and the SPIRIT 2025 statement.
PRISMA explicitly does not assess review conduct or methodological quality. Use appropriate methods and risk-of-bias tools separately.
Official sources: PRISMA 2020 resources and the primary statement.
STROBE helps identify whether selection, measurement, bias, confounding, missing data, sensitivity analyses, and generalizability are reported. It does not establish that those methods were adequate.
Official source: STROBE.
Separately assess risk of bias and applicability with a suitable tool such as the current QUADAS family when relevant. STARD’s official implementation guidance explicitly says not to use the reporting checklist as a design-quality tool.
Official source: STARD 2015.
Check dataset practices, index-test specification, evaluation, algorithmic bias and fairness, applicability, and generalizability. If the primary aim is development or evaluation of a multivariable prediction model, use TRIPOD+AI instead.
Official source: STARD-AI.
Do not select it solely because software called “AI” appears in a paper. Select it when the study’s primary object is a prediction model. Relevant extensions include TRIPOD-Cluster, TRIPOD-SRMA, and TRIPOD-LLM.
Official sources: TRIPOD and the TRIPOD+AI statement.
Check timeline, diagnostic reasoning, interventions, outcomes, adverse events, patient perspective where available, informed consent, privacy, and venue requirements.
Official source: CARE checklist.
The Essential 10 are a minimum reporting set, not a ranking. Review study design, sample size, inclusion/exclusion, randomization, blinding, outcome measures, statistics, animal details, procedures, and results; also assess ethics, welfare, humane endpoints, adverse events, protocol registration, data access, and interests.
Official source: ARRIVE 2.0.
SQUIRE states that every item should be considered, but not every element belongs in every manuscript. Attend to local context, rationale, intervention evolution, measures, analysis, ethics, unintended consequences, and sustainability.
Official source: SQUIRE 2.0.
Assess perspective, comparators, time horizon, discounting, outcome and cost measurement, model assumptions, heterogeneity, distributional effects where applicable, uncertainty, engagement, funding, and conflicts. Use a separate critical-appraisal framework for methodological quality.
Official source: ISPOR CHEERS.
Select by methods, not by the presence of quotations. Review researcher reflexivity, sampling, context, data collection, analytic process, credibility, participant voice, ethics, and limitations without imposing one epistemology on all qualitative traditions.
Official registry records: SRQR and COREQ.
Use the guideline that matches the study’s primary design and claim:
Multiple guidelines can apply, but do not create redundant demands. State which base and extension address each concern.
These standards describe minimum experiment or repository metadata. They complement, rather than replace, study-design reporting and methodological appraisal.
Retain with qualification. NCBI GEO’s page was last modified 8 July 2026 and still states that GEO submission procedures implement:
ArrayExpress/Annotare also continues to reference these standards. Verify the current repository’s fields, file formats, raw/processed data expectations, and accession requirements; do not rely on an old static project page alone.
Official implementation source: GEO and MIAME/MINSEQE.
Retain as a modular current-qualified standard. The HUPO Proteomics Standards Initiative lists released components with separate versions, including mass spectrometry, mass-spectrometry informatics, quantification, gel electrophoresis, gel informatics, chromatography, and capillary electrophoresis.
Select only components relevant to the actual workflow and verify current repository expectations. Do not present “MIAPE” as one unversioned universal checklist.
Official source: HUPO-PSI MIAPE.
Retain with qualification. ISAC continues to identify MIFlowCyt 1.0 as an ISAC recommendation for experiment overview, samples, instrumentation, and data analysis. Also check current FCS, gating, panel, controls, and FlowRepository requirements.
Official source: ISAC MIFlowCyt.
Use MIAPPE 1.2, released October 2024, for plant phenotyping metadata. It remains compatible with 1.1; version 2.0 was still in early development on the verification date.
Official source: MIAPPE releases.
Do not present standalone MIGS/MIMS as the current umbrella. The Genomic Standards Consortium now organizes these legacy checklists within MIxS (Minimum Information about any Sequence), alongside newer checklists and environmental packages. Select the current MIxS release and applicable checklist/package.
Official source: GSC standards.
The EQUATOR database contains hundreds of guidelines. Common additional choices include:
If no suitable guideline exists, say so. Do not force the nearest checklist or invent one.
Use:
“Item 12 is not reported clearly enough to determine the analysis population. Please identify the included participants and reconcile this denominator with Figure 1.”
Avoid:
“The manuscript scores 18/30 on CONSORT and is therefore low quality.”
Report counts or item identifiers only as navigation aids. The local selector deliberately emits no percentage or merit score.