A Short SPIRIT Checklist for Peer Reviewers to Improve the Reporting Quality in Published Articles (SPIRIT-PR)

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Adequate Reporting in Published Study Protocols of Randomized Controlled Trials
• Interventions: Other: Usual practice; Other: SPIRIT checklist plus usual practice

• Registration Number: NCT05820984
• Lead Sponsor: University of Oxford

Brief Summary

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.

Detailed Description

The full protocol is available on Open Science Framework where the study was prospectively registered: https://osf.io/z2hm9

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2020-06-01
• Primary Completion: 2022-06-30
• Study Completion: 2022-06-30
• Status Verified: 2023-04
• Study First Submitted: 2023-04-19
• Study First Submitted QC: 2023-04-19
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-04-19
• Study First Posted: 2023-04-20
• Last Update Posted: 2023-04-20

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 178

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Usual practice	Usual practice	After accepting to review an article, peer reviewers will receive the automated, journal specific standard email with general information as per each journal's usual practice.
SPIRIT checklist plus usual practice	SPIRIT checklist plus usual practice	After accepting to review an article, peer reviewers will receive the automated, journal specific standard email with general information as per each journal's usual practice (e.g. where to access the manuscript, date when the peer review report is due). In addition, peer-reviewers who received a manuscript which was randomised to the experimental arm will receive an additional email including a short version of the SPIRIT checklist together with a short explanation of those items.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Completeness of reporting	Through study completion, an average of 1 year	The primary outcome of this study will be the difference of the mean proportion of adequately reported items of the 10 most important and poorly reported SPIRIT items between the two intervention arms.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Completeness of reporting	Through study completion, an average of 1 year	Mean proportion for each of the 10 most important and poorly reported SPIRIT items separately (including also separate analysis of sub-items).
Proportion of articles published	Through study completion, an average of 9 months; will be assessed from routinely collected data
Time from assigning an academic editor until the first decision (as communicated to the author after the first round of peer-review).	Through study completion, an average of 4 months; will be assessed from routinely collected data
Proportion of articles directly rejected after the first round of peer-review	Through study completion, an average of 4 months; will be assessed from routinely collected data

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

The BMJ Publishing Group; 🇬🇧 London, United Kingdom