Results of a longitudinal study of rigorous manuscript submission guidelines designed to improve the quality of clinical research reporting in a peer-reviewed surgical journal

The introduction of the Guidelines resulted in significant improvement in the quality of reporting in the Journal. The low cost vs the benefit suggests that the Guidelines can be an effective way to improve reporting quality in nonrandomized studies. We encourage further efforts to increase inclusion of reporting criteria as well as evaluation and improvement of the Guidelines. We suggest that editors of other surgical publications consider implementing analogous guidelines.