Animal Studies

A statement indicating that the protocol and procedures employed were ethically reviewed and approved, as well as the name of the body approving, must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. Authors are encouraged to adhere to animal research reporting standards, for example, the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting study design and statistical analysis; experimental procedures; experimental animals, and housing and husbandry. Authors should also state whether experiments were performed by relevant institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals:

• US authors should cite compliance with the US National Research Council’s Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, the US Public Health Service’s Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
• UK authors should conform to UK legislation under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 Amendment Regulations (SI 2012/3039).
• European authors outside the UK should conform to Directive 2010/63/EU.

Clinical Trial Registration

We require that clinical trials are prospectively registered in a publicly accessible database and clinical trial registration numbers should be included in all papers that report their results. Please include the name of the trial register and your clinical trial registration number at the end of your abstract. If your trial is not registered or was registered retrospectively, please explain the reasons for this.

Research Reporting Guidelines

Accurate and complete reporting enables readers to fully appraise research, replicate it, and use it. We encourage authors to adhere to the following research reporting standards.

• CONSORT
• SPIRIT
• PRISMA
• PRISMA-P
• STROBE
• CARE
• COREQ
• STARD and TRIPOD
• CHEERS
• The EQUATOR Network
• Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship (FORCE11)
• ARRIVE guidelines
• National Research Council’s Institute for Laboratory Animal Research guidelines: the Gold Standard Publication Checklist from Hooijmans and colleagues
• Minimum Information Guidelines from Diverse Bioscience Communities (MIBBI) website; Biosharing website
• REFLECT Statement