Good publication practices: declaration, approval, and now enforcement of reporting standards

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Conceptually, there is no difference between simply endorsing and requiring without enforcement.

EQUATOR Network

INTRODUCTION, OR RESULTS OF ORGANIC GROWTH

Since the inaugural issue of Digital Diagnostics in 2020, nearly 350 articles of various categories have been published, with one in every four containing new data, such as original research, case reports, systematic reviews, technical reports, and datasets.¹ These publications have been cited 176 times, accounting for 43% of the journal's total citations (n = 407). This reflects the considerable interest in new findings published in the journal. This is due in part to the journal's ranking at the top of the SCIENCE INDEX² among Russian medical journals in diagnostic radiology as of 2023. This was accomplished solely by organic growth; one exception is that the journal was actively promoted in the international medical community by translating its articles into English and Chinese. Otherwise, the journal's evolution has been consistent, with a focus on balancing editorial capabilities with the scope and quality of research in diagnostic radiology in Russia. According to submitted papers, the quality of research has not changed considerably. However, the number of submitted papers is steadily increasing (from 62 in 2022 to 161 in 2023 and 203 in 2024). In this context, it is difficult to ensure a consistently high quality of published information, as well as its use (citing) by Russian and international researchers. Thus, it is time to shift from organic to controlled growth.

CONTROLLED GROWTH: DO WHAT YOU MUST

Every scientific journal's primary purpose is to ensure that submitted materials are thoroughly reviewed before being published and disseminated, in order to provide quality content. However, achieving this goal is not easy. Numerous publications about insufficient content quality, including in top-rated journals, indicate that no one has yet achieved complete success. There are three main causes behind this:

• Low quality of submitted research and reports (manuscripts);
• Low efficacy of peer review (including when the journal's editors are involved);
• Researchers' misconduct (concealing, distorting, or even fabricating research findings).

We will not go into detail on how these statements are justified. This issue is certainly relevant for today's scientific journals, including Russian medical journals [1–6] and researchers [7, 8]. Therefore, the central question (which has remained for several decades) is: What should we do?

Indeed, how can a journal improve the quality of its publications in the near future while staying on budget? Before we go any further, let us define the quality of a research paper and which of its elements can be modified by a scientific journal's editorial team. First, the quality of a research paper is determined by the quality of the study and study report. Second, the quality of the study and study report is defined as compliance with existing scientific, ethical, and legal regulations, guidelines, and standards. Third, it is crucial to acknowledge that changing the quality of research in a specific field is beyond the competence of a specialized journal. This requires nationwide collaboration among medical journal editors and publishers, ethics committees, grantmakers, and management of research institutions. However, we have no control over the quality of study reports. Our goal is to publish papers that contain essential information (sufficient for a comprehensive assessment and replication of the study), while excluding works that violate basic scientific and ethical standards. These include the Declaration of Helsinki³ and guidelines of the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences [9], as well as legal regulations (e.g., guidelines for the use and disclosure of personal and confidential medical information, copyright regulations, and state-regulated rules for conducting clinical trials).

Today, ethics review (preliminary or, in some cases, continuing) is mandatory for all health-related research involving humans, including human materials and data, and preliminary registration of such studies3 (regarding not only protocol and safety, but also the expertise of researchers) [9]. Source data must be reviewed as well (including by editorial teams) [10]. Finally, the Good Publication Practice requires the use of reporting guidelines when preparing reports on planned and completed studies. These guidelines can be found in the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network.⁴ Our goal is to ensure that manuscripts contain essential information and that the data used in the study are correct. Therefore, our top priority is to gradually introduce reporting guidelines into the editorial workflow (transition period: until the end of 2025), with a mandatory conclusion from an ethics committee or other authorized body with similar functions for all submitted manuscripts. Following the implementation of these changes, all submitted manuscripts will be required to complete preliminary (prior to initiation) research registration and submit source data for subsequent publication (provided that the work was accepted for publication and there are no data access restrictions).

IMPLEMENTING REPORTING GUIDELINES INTO THE EDITORIAL WORKFLOW

Standardization of research content is necessary to prevent publishing incomplete, incorrect, or misleading information, which is a common issue in scientific publications. The extent of the problem cannot be overstated [11]. The major concern appears to be the incompleteness of published data, which prevents critical assessment of research and future use of study findings, depreciating financial and human assets invested in research [12]. To address this particular issue, the international initiative EQUATOR Network was launched in 2008.4 The EQUATOR Network creates, updates, and disseminates reporting guidelines, supports the development of new guidelines, and assists scientific journals and research institutions in implementing adequate research reporting.

The EQUATOR Network⁴ defines reporting guidelines as a document (a checklist or other structured list) with minimal requirements to be followed in preparing a research publication that allows for replication of the study, is useful for clinical and other professional decision-making, and contains generalizable data. The primary guidelines (CONSORT,⁵ STROBE,⁶ STARD,⁷ TRIPOD-AI,⁸ PRISMA,⁹ CARE¹⁰) provide checklists along with detailed explanations and examples produced by collaborative efforts of researchers, methodologists, editors, and medical writers. The checklists of all these guidelines have been translated into Russian, and some of them (STROBE⁶ [13], STARD⁷ [14], TRIPOD⁸ [15], CARE¹⁰ [16]) have been fully translated and published in our journal. In the near future, we must ensure that Russian translations of the primary guidelines are fully synchronized and regularly updated; ideally, Russian experts should be involved in their development. The key challenge, however, is to integrate reporting guidelines into the editorial workflow rather than merely translating them.

To date, several approaches to implementing reporting guidelines by scientific journals have naturally emerged:

• Declaring support for the EQUATOR Network⁴ initiative (“We hereby declare…” or similar statements);
• Recommending or endorsing applicable reporting guidelines during manuscript preparation (“authors are recommended…”, “authors should…”, etc.);
• Enforcing compliance with reporting guidelines (by efforts of editors, reviewers, etc.).

The efficacy of all these approaches to implementing reporting guidelines has been studied. It is now widely recognized that merely declaring support or recommending reporting guidelines is either insufficiently effective [17–22] or completely ineffective [23]. Moreover, even if the authors declare compliance with reporting guidelines, it does not ensure their appropriate use [21]. Enforcing reporting guidelines as a mandatory condition for reviewing a manuscript also has no considerable positive effect on the completeness of the reported data [24]. The reason is that authors incorrectly complete checklist items or leave them blank (see examples for various guidelines in [25–28]); furthermore, some authors (approximately 10%) refuse to comply with the journal’s requirements [24]. Thus, the only viable option to improve content quality is to enforce reporting guidelines through the editorial team's efforts. Large journals employ reporting editors for this purpose [25]. Randomized trials support the advantages of these changes in the editorial workflow over conventional reviewing [29, 30]. Unfortunately, success is difficult to achieve when reporting guidelines are enforced by editors [24, 31] or reviewers who are not adequately trained. Reviewers frequently fail to remind authors that they must comply with reporting guidelines [32]. Furthermore, encouraging reviewers to follow reporting guidelines has little impact on the completeness of data in submitted manuscripts [33]. This is most likely why the quality of research reports published in scientific journals differs only marginally from that of preprints [34]. This indicates that the organic growth model fails to improve the quality of a scientific journal (including ours) when a standard and universally applicable peer-review system and editorial workflow are maintained.

BARRIERS TO IMPLEMENTING REPORTING GUIDELINES

Several factors limit the implementation of reporting guidelines in the editorial workflow. These include the characteristics of guidelines (numerous guidelines even within a single subject area), their limited applicability (individual guidelines do not provide a comprehensive set of necessary reporting items and sometimes contain unnecessary items) [35], and the difficulties of mass, timely translation into national languages. Furthermore, the characteristics of process owners (editors, authors, and reviewers) must be considered. Let us discuss the latter in more detail. In this context, there are two major barriers: low awareness of the existence and importance of guidelines, and low compliance by editors, authors, and reviewers who are already familiar with the guidelines [36, 37].

One would expect modern medical journal editors to be aware of the EQUATOR Network.⁴ However, just like 10 years ago [38], approximately 40% of medical journal editors have never heard of this initiative [37]. Furthermore, editors rarely prioritize reporting guidelines for inclusion in professional (editorial) educational programs [39], despite the fact that familiarity with reporting guidelines has long been recognized as a key competency of biomedical journal editors [40]. Notably, only approximately a third (29%) of medical journals in a representative sample [41], and approximately every second journal (46%) in a sample of top-rated medical journals [42], encourage reviewers to use reporting guidelines; however, even the latter merely provide general instructions [42]. Specialty reporting guidelines, such as those for artificial intelligence research, are generally never included in editorial instructions and policies [43, 44].

Another major concern is that authors are twice less frequently aware of reporting guidelines than editors [38]. Importantly, every third (35%) author learns about reporting guidelines from the journal (editorial articles, author guidelines, editorial policy); furthermore, approximately 30% of authors learn via colleagues or educational programs [45]. However, even authors who are aware of reporting guidelines (every fourth, according to some research [46]) may struggle with selecting relevant guidelines. Fortunately, the EQUATOR Network⁴ website has a search engine for selecting guidelines based on research type, research area, and manuscript section/element, as well as a keyword search. Feedback will support the use of reporting guidelines in Digital Diagnostics. After submitting a manuscript, the authors will be informed within one day about applicable guidelines and whether the Russian version is available. Reviewers will get similar recommendations, along with an option to engage in peer review. The latter is essential for reviewers who may eventually become authors of our journal. Scientific journals rarely include this information in reviewer guidelines [42], and reviewers are typically not expected to assess manuscripts for compliance with reporting guidelines [47].

However, informing those involved in publishing is not the greatest challenge. The primary issue is poor adherence to reporting guidelines when preparing reports on planned and completed studies. As previously stated, this issue can be addressed by enforcing reporting guidelines through the efforts of qualified editors. Authors best follow reporting guidelines when they are enforced by the journal's editorial team. In contrast, when the journal's editorial team fails to enforce reporting guidelines, approximately half of informed authors refuse to use them (as illustrated by the STROBE⁶ guidelines) [45]. Another issue is that editors frequently fail to comply with the rules already adopted by the journal [24]. Only half of editors require authors to review their manuscripts according to applicable reporting guidelines, even if the manuscript meets the journal's criteria for relevance and originality [24]. The main reasons why editors fail to comply with reporting guidelines are the lack of time [37] and the fear of losing authors to journals with a simpler (if not downright primitive) manuscript submission policy [36, 48], which determines the fear of losing the competition in the subject area [49].

One way to overcome these fears is to simultaneously introduce reporting guidelines in all journals in the specific subject area. This appears to be unachievable in a highly competitive field of academic publishing. However, there have been cases where reporting guidelines were implemented simultaneously in several journals in the same subject area (up to 28 journals at once) [50]. Furthermore, editors should understand that the use of reporting guidelines indicates high-quality content. One-third (36%) of all medical journals in the Scopus database incorporate reporting guidelines in their author guidelines [51]. In comparison, this parameter was nearly twice as high (61%) for top-rated journals over the same period (2017) and increased to 73% by 2022 [52]. Comparably high support levels have been reported for medical journals of 11 top-rated publishers [32]. Notably, international radiology journals also show relatively strong support for reporting guidelines (61.5%) [43]. However, the majority of radiology journals merely declare support or endorsement of reporting guidelines [43]. This is despite the fact that Radiology, the leading journal in this subject area, mandated the use of reporting guideline checklists as early as 2016 [53].

Therefore, it is the journal's responsibility to inform authors, promote and monitor compliance (through reporting guideline selection algorithms, adapted explanatory texts for the most frequently used guidelines, and active feedback channels for authors and reviewers), and track changes by incorporating specialized journal indicators into the editorial workflow. However, there is reason to believe that enforcing reporting guidelines during the manuscript submission stage may be too late (and ineffective). Thus, it is advisable to use reporting guidelines already during study planning [54], or at least during draft manuscript preparation [55].

BENEFITS OF REPORTING GUIDELINES (FOR AUTHORS AND BEYOND)

Implementing reporting guidelines into the editorial workflow ensures that essential information is provided, thus improving the quality of manuscripts. As previously stated, this essential information is necessary to assess research quality, replicate the findings, use published data in real-world practice, or generalize them (when necessary). Reporting guidelines are designed specifically for this purpose and will surely be effective if all parties involved adhere to them [29, 30].

Furthermore, reporting guidelines improve the readability and structure of publications, making them more useful and understandable [56].

Faster peer review [57] is more than just a benefit; it is a long-held dream of both authors and scientific journal editors. Accelerating peer review will also reduce the workload for everyone involved in the editorial workflow. This is only attainable through compliance with reporting guidelines, at least by authors and editors; moreover, authors must follow the guidelines already at the study planning stage.

Enforcement of reporting guidelines increases citation rates (on average by 43%) [58]. Furthermore, citation rates of articles prepared according to quality standards may be improved by promoting the citation of high-quality publications. Unfortunately, citation rates are currently driven by factors other than final publication quality (data completeness) [59, 60] and actual content (research and study report quality), as evidenced by numerous studies on citation patterns.

The expected benefit is that manuscripts prepared according to reporting guidelines are more likely to be accepted for publication [61, 62]. Furthermore, compliance with reporting guidelines from the EQUATOR Network⁴ may accelerate study report preparation, facilitate data extraction for systematic reviews, and improve the reproducibility and clinical relevance of research.

The expected benefit for a journal is a seamless inclusion into bibliographic databases, which is necessary to improve its international presence. Unfortunately, in 2024, Digital Diagnostics was not included in PubMed Central¹¹ due to the low content quality. We must overcome this barrier within 1–2 years together with you, our authors and reviewers, if we wish to be something more than a regional journal with a narrow professional audience. We, as editors, believe we can do better.

Furthermore, reporting guidelines may help to improve instructions for use of commercial products proposed for clinical practice, which currently contain less than half of the information necessary for reliability, transparency, and objectivity assessment (as evidenced by machine learning-based predictive models) [35]. Given the potential negative impact of low-quality clinical study reports on treatment outcomes [63, 64], researchers have an ethical obligation to ensure that they are sufficiently complete. Therefore, compliance with reporting guidelines is essential for the core purpose (responsibility) of medical science (i.e., patient health), regardless of the impact on citation rates, reader interest, and other secondary efficacy indicators.

OTHER URGENT EDITORIAL INNOVATIONS

As previously stated, completeness of provided information (background, methods, and results) is not the sole factor determining the quality of a study report (manuscript). It is equally crucial to provide data that ensures the transparency of ethical aspects of the research work. There are four groups of ethical considerations that facilitate scientific integrity and foster trust is science in general. These include authorship, human participants and animal subjects in research, research transparency (conflicts of interest, originality of submitted materials, disclosure of information about the use of generative artificial intelligence in report preparation, open peer review), and data availability. A comprehensive discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this editorial article. As editors, we expect most of these issues to be considered and resolved by ethics committees [65]. However, in practice, we witness the opposite. Therefore, it was decided to expand information to be included in the Additional Information section of each manuscript (with some items only applicable to specific article types).

• Author contributions.
•  
• Ethics approval.
• Consent for publication.¹²
• Funding sources.
• Disclosure of interests.
• Statement of originality.
• Data availability statement.
• Generative AI.
• Provenance and peer-review.
•  

Detailed explanations with examples of author statements can be found in the Author Guidelines. Providing relevant information will become mandatory for manuscript acceptance immediately after this editorial article has been published.

CONCLUSION

In the last decade, requirements for manuscripts submitted to scientific journals have changed considerably all over the world. This primarily refers to the implementation of reporting guidelines that are recognized and supported by top-rated journals. This is today's reality. In this article, we attempted to demonstrate that reporting guidelines, when applied correctly, are a “life vest” rather than a “straitjacket” for authors. We encourage authors submitting manuscripts to Digital Diagnostics and other Russian medical journals to follow the EQUATOR Network's reporting guidelines. This will undoubtedly improve the quality of research and facilitate publication in top-rated Russian and international journals.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Author contributions: R.T. Saygitov: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft; V.E. Sinitsyn: conceptualization, writing—review & editing. All the authors approved the version of the manuscript to be published and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Funding sources: No funding.

Disclosure of interests: R.T. Saygitov is a scientific editor at Digital Diagnostics and Consortium Psychiatricum journals, and a scientific advisor at the publishing house Pediatr (Russia). V.E. Sinitsyn is the Editor-in-Chief at Digital Diagnostics.

Statement of originality: No previously published material (text, images, or data) was used in this work.

Data availability statement: The editorial policy regarding data sharing does not apply to this work.

Generative AI: No generative artificial intelligence technologies were used to prepare this article.

Provenance and peer review: This paper was commissioned by the journal’s Editorial Board and underwent prioritized internal peer review.

¹ Hereinafter: adapted from eLIBRARY.RU. Accessed on: February 17, 2025.

² SCIENCE INDEX is an information analysis system based on the Russian Science Citation Index. It is designed to provide a comprehensive analysis and statistical assessment of the publication activities of Russian researchers and scientific organizations.

³ WMA Declaration of Helsinki — Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants; [approximately 5 pages]. In: World Medical Association [Internet]. Ferney-Voltaire: World Medical Association, 2024–2025. Available at: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki/ Accessed on: May 6, 2025.

⁴ Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research Network [Internet]. Oxford: Centre for Statistics in Medicine; 2006–. Available at: www.equator-network.org. Accessed on: May 6, 2025.

⁵ CONsolidated Standards Of Reporting Trials (CONSORT).

⁶ Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE).

⁷ Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (STARD).

⁸ Transparent Reporting of a Multivariable Prediction Model for Individual Prognosis or Diagnosis — Artificial Intelligence (TRIPOD-AI).

⁹ Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

¹⁰ Case Report Guidelines (CARE).

¹¹ PubMed Central is an open-access database of full-text biomedical publications maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine.

¹² For case reports only.

About the authors

Ruslan T. Saygitov

Author for correspondence.
Email: saygitov@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8915-6153
SPIN-code: 8641-2334

MD, Dr. Sci. (Medicine)

Valentin E. Sinitsyn

Email: vsini@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5649-2193
SPIN-code: 8449-6590

MD, Dr. Sci. (Medicine), Professor

References

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