Write well to... reduce research waste

Post by Julia Slone-Murphy | Photo by Gary Chan on Unsplash

A shocking amount of health research is thrown away. Are you sitting down?

It’s estimated that 85% of all health research is avoidably wasted. This happens because:

• completed research isn't always published
• published reports are often not clear, complete, or accurate enough for others to understand and replicate the data
• studies are not set in the context of a thorough literature review, and so they don't build upon previous lessons learned.

All these issues can be rectified by careful, accurate and complete reporting.

But how do you know what to report? Thankfully, there is plenty of help out there. Guidelines have been developed and published specifically to help authors remember all the essential points that should be included when writing about a study. There are more than 400 of them (all named with catchy acronyms) covering every kind of study. Major ones include CONSORT for randomised clinical trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, and ARRIVE for animal studies. 

For example, if you're reporting on a clinical trial, the CONSORT guidelines will help ensure you include the following in your report (among many other points):

• In the title: the words “randomised trial”, so that the report can be indexed correctly.
• In the introduction: reference to a systematic review of the subject area - or a note that there isn't one - to show that your participants were not unnecessarily exposed to the risks of research. 
• In the methods: a full description of the trial design, including whether it was parallel, crossover, factorial, etc.; how the participants were randomised; and what the inclusion and exclusion criteria were (and if there were any changes to them once the study had commenced). 
• In the results: a flow chart of the participants to show enrolment, randomisation, treatment allocation, dropouts or losses to follow-up, and analysis; baseline data; primary and other outcomes; and any reports of harms or unintended effects.
• In the discussion: an acknowledgement of the study's limitations, and a balanced interpretation of the results.​

Is it compulsory to follow these guidelines?
Some journals do require submitted manuscripts to follow reporting guidelines, but many more just recommend doing so. So for most journals, no, following these guidelines is not compulsory. However, in my strong opinion, it seems senseless to ignore them, especially given the shocking statistic on waste, which is largely a result of authors not following such guidelines. Reporting your study completely - by following the appropriate guideline and including all the information listed in the checklist for that guideline - will benefit you, your colleagues, and the field as a whole. In addition, it will avoid wasting the valuable resources used in your study - whether this means the money you spent on reagents and equipment, animals that were sacrificed in the pursuit of scientific advancement, or human volunteers who gave their time and exposed themselves to the risks of research.

All the guidelines named above - and hundreds more - are listed in a searchable database from the Equator Network, which also has a flow chart and tools to help you choose the most appropriate guideline for your study.

Next, find out how you can write in a way that helps boost citations once you've published! And if you missed it, catch up on the previous post in this series, where I explain how writing well can help you improve the peer review process.

At NeuroEdit, we help researchers publish faster and more effectively. We work with native and non-native English speakers at all stages of their career. If you're writing a paper and all the information we've listed above sounds too time-consuming or too difficult to implement, we can help. Not only can we ensure your manuscript follows the right guideline for your study, but we will also eliminate linguistic errors, make your writing engaging, showcase your figures professionally (including CONSORT flowcharts), and more - usually within a week, and often for around the price of an antibody!  Contact us to see how we can help you improve your manuscript.

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