©EQUATOR Network

We are delighted to announce that the EQUATOR Network has recently installed an automatic translation tool to the website. Based on the Google Translate functionality, it allows on-demand automatic translation of our website into over 100 different languages. We hope that the addition of this tool will make our web page content more accessible to users from around the world, including improving access in all World Health Organisation (WHO) languages.

The translation tool can be accessed by clicking the Google Translate button in the top section of the EQUATOR website. Select the desired language and click on the ‘translate’ button to display the page content in the selected language.

We are grateful to our partner, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), for providing inspiration and support for implementing automatic translations of the EQUATOR website.

We are keen to hear your thoughts about the automatic translation tool. Please contact Shona Kirtley if you have any comments or questions.

For more information about the automatic translation tool and for help using it, please visit the Web Translation Help page

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Inadequate reporting of trials is frequent in the medical literature, particularly for study outcomes – key information about the outcome selection process, outcome definition, measurement, and analysis is often missing or poorly reported in trial protocols and published reports. These gaps in reporting of investigated trial outcomes limit reproducibility of results, and knowledge synthesis efforts. They also enable outcome switching and other reporting biases. As clinicians, patients and policymakers rely on published results of trials for making evidence-based decisions, poorly reported outcomes can ultimately undermine the uptake of trial results into clinical practice.

To provide harmonised guidance for describing outcomes in trial protocols and reports, respectively, SPIRIT-Outcomes 2022 and CONSORT-Outcomes 2022 were developed using the EQUATOR framework for health research reporting guidelines. And for the first time, patient and public panelists were engaged in the development of both extensions, alongside researchers, clinicians, journal editors, and the developers of SPIRIT 2013 and CONSORT 2010.

Consensus on the recommendations was achieved through a three-round voting process completed by 124 panelists from 22 countries with expertise in clinical trials, followed by a global consensus meeting with patient and public partners hosted at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children in 2019. Together, their input determined which recommendations would be included to improve how clinical trials plans are reported and also how their results are shared. The developers expect that the use and implementation of these extensions by clinical trial authors, research funders, peer reviewers, journals, and other end-users may help enhance trial utility, reproducibility, and minimise the risk of selective reporting, thus reducing research waste.

Read more about SPIRIT-Outcomes 2022 and CONSORT-Outcomes 2022, recently published in JAMA.

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For the first time in 2 years, the UK EQUATOR Centre’s Publication School is back in person this April. This 2-day course on writing about health research was first run in 2018, and its success was presented at the REWARD-EQUATOR Conference in Berlin in February 2020.

Early-career researchers, clinicians, and students will join methodology and writing experts in Oxford, UK to learn a smooth process for writing a journal article that embeds transparency principles. This highly effective course covers topics like negotiating authorship, choosing a journal, using reporting guidelines to ensure completeness, and navigating peer review. It also looks at the structure and content of each section of a typical health research journal article, with advice from experienced statistical peer reviewers and journal editors. Course alumni are confident in their writing skills and go on to share transparency ideals with their colleagues.

Registration for Publication School in Oxford is now open. The UK EQUATOR Centre welcomes enquiries from anyone with limited academic writing experience who will be involved in writing a health research journal article, including students, researchers, clinicians, and patient representatives. Find more information on the EQUATOR Network website.

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The Chinese and the Canadian EQUATOR Centres have developed a massive open online course (MOOC) introducing current issues in open and publication science, including publication ethics, reporting guidelines and their implementation, open science, and peer review of manuscripts — issues that are highly relevant for researchers, reviewers, editors, readers, and publishers. The course starts on January 30, 2023, and is free of charge.

The MOOC was developed by using the open version of the edX (Open edX) platform. To participate in the course and have access to the pre-recorded courses, learners need to complete a registration form (please see the link to the form below).

The MOOC consists of 20 modules that will be delivered in English. Each module consists of a brief pre-module quiz, five required readings, a video presentation, and a brief post-module quiz. The learner needs to complete all contents of each module in 15 minutes. Learners achieving an 80% assessment on each module, for all modules, will be entitled to a certificate of completion and achievement (micro credentialing) from the Chinese and Canadian EQUATOR centres (signed by professors Zhao-Xiang Bian and David Moher).

Further course details and the registration form are available here.

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In 2018, the number of clinical medical research papers in China exceeded 44,000. Therefore, the quality and transparency of health research outputs in China are very important. A paper led by Chinese EQUATOR Centre members focused on three main types of health research: clinical trials, systematic reviews, and clinical practice guidelines, and summarized China’s progress in promoting research quality and transparency.

The paper highlights that in the past decades, China has focused on three core stages of health research: registration, implementation, and reporting, mainly involving setting up clinical research, evidence-based medicine (EBM) and EQUATOR centres, establishing trials and clinical practice guideline registries, issuing registration and data sharing policies, creating the ResMan platform for trials’ data management, and developing and translating some core reporting guidelines and their extensions. Furthermore, a number of specific guidelines have been developed for the registration and reporting of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) research, an important component of health research in China.

The paper also discusses ways in which China can further improve research quality and transparency. In the future, Chinese clinical research, EBM and EQUATOR centres can play a more proactive role in research registration, implementation, and reporting, especially in data management and sharing, as well as good publication practices in TCM research. Timely audits and regular feedback on all relevant activities are necessary.

Read the paper at the website of Journal of Clinical Epidemiology: “Promoting the quality and transparency of health research in China”

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The moment for external participation in the development of the official CONSORT extension for nutrition trials (CONSORT-Nut) has arrived. The STAR-Nut Steering Group has launched a very short survey (less than 3 mins to complete!) to gather information from different stakeholders on their views about reporting of nutrition trials. Anyone can participate in this survey; access it here.

This project was registered with the EQUATOR Network in 2018, and we are now finishing the background work for the CONSORT-Nut development. This work consists of a series of systematic literature reviews mapping the landscape of nutrition trials, describing general and methodological aspects of these studies, as well as their scope, rationale, and reporting limitations.

The first publication is already available as an open access article that can be assessed here. The results should be available soon and will inform the next steps of the research programme (detailed protocol available here).

Keep up-to-date with CONSORT-Nut development by following our official Twitter account (@consort_nut), participating in the survey (and opting for being included in the CONSORT-Nut mailing list), and checking future issues of this newsletter, which will bring you fresh news about this delicious project!