Transparent and accurate reporting increases reliability, utility, and impact of your research: reporting guidelines and the EQUATOR Network

The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network is an international initiative set up to advance high quality reporting of health research studies; it promotes good reporting practices including the wider implementation of reporting guidelines. EQUATOR provides free online resources http://www.equator-network.org webcite supported by education and training activities and assists in the development of robust reporting guidelines. This paper outlines EQUATOR's goals and activities and offers suggestions for organizations and individuals involved in health research on how to strengthen research reporting.Scholarly publishing is undoubtedly undergoing a revolution that has brought not only new ways of disseminating research information but also a more critical perspective on assessing published information. Some of these changes are driven by the new technologies; others have occurred as a response to the shortcomings of scholarly publishing such as difficulty of accessing published research or obtaining sufficient information from the published text. Journals remain the core of research communication but the way that this is now done has been transformed. The vast majority of scientific journals, including those publishing health research papers, are now available online [1]. This allows the supplementing of research articles with additional information or data, showing pre-publication history or readers' comments on the published research. Some of these features have been facilitated by open access publishing, which has grown from a brave experiment into a highly regarded and frequently used publication method. In recent years we have also seen a growing awareness of ethical issues and an acknowledgement of widespread problems influencing the reliability of the published medical research literature [2-5]. Such problems also extend to the process of manuscripts' peer review [6].Some journals have taken steps to improve the quality of the