Impact of a Short Form of the SPIRIT Checklist for Peer Reviewers to Improve the Reporting of Protocols for Randomised Controlled Trials Published in Biomedical Journals: a Randomised Controlled Trial (SPIRIT-PR)
Impact of a Short Form of the SPIRIT Checklist for Peer Reviewers to Improve the Reporting of Protocols for Randomised Controlled Trials Published in Biomedical Journals: a Randomised Controlled Trial (SPIRIT-PR)
Transparent and accurate reporting is key, so that readers can adequately interpreting the results of a study. The aim of this project is to evaluate whether reminding peer reviewers of the most important SPIRIT reporting items (including a short explanation of those items) will result in higher adherence to SPIRIT guidelines in published protocols for RCTS. During the standard peer-review process, peer-reviewers will be randomly allocated to use either (i) a short version of the SPIRIT checklist including the ten most important and poorly reported SPIRIT items ; or (ii) no checklist. The aim is to find an intervention which improves the reporting, making it easier for readers to adequately interpret the presented articles.
The full protocol is available on Open Science Framework where the study was prospectively registered: https://osf.io/z2hm9
Inclusion criteria for journals:
It was planned from the beginning that this study will only be conducted at the BMJ Open as it publishes numerous protocols. Hence, no inclusion criteria for the journal were specified.
Inclusion criteria for manuscripts:
All submitted manuscripts sent out for external review that described protocols for RCTs.
Exclusion criterial for manuscripts:
We excluded (i) Manuscripts which were clearly labelled as a pilot or feasibility study (ii) Studies randomizing animals or cells (iii) Separate publications of data analysis plans
Included peer-reviewers:
-Peer reviewers that were invited following usual journal practice