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. 2018 May 24;13(5):e0197882.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197882. eCollection 2018.

ARRIVE has not ARRIVEd: Support for the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of in vivo Experiments) guidelines does not improve the reporting quality of papers in animal welfare, analgesia or anesthesia

Vivian Leung  1 , Frédérik Rousseau-Blass  1 , Guy Beauchamp  1 , Daniel S J Pang  1
Affiliations

ARRIVE has not ARRIVEd: Support for the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of in vivo Experiments) guidelines does not improve the reporting quality of papers in animal welfare, analgesia or anesthesia

Vivian Leung et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Poor research reporting is a major contributing factor to low study reproducibility, financial and animal waste. The ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines were developed to improve reporting quality and many journals support these guidelines. The influence of this support is unknown. We hypothesized that papers published in journals supporting the ARRIVE guidelines would show improved reporting compared with those in non-supporting journals. In a retrospective, observational cohort study, papers from 5 ARRIVE supporting (SUPP) and 2 non-supporting (nonSUPP) journals, published before (2009) and 5 years after (2015) the ARRIVE guidelines, were selected. Adherence to the ARRIVE checklist of 20 items was independently evaluated by two reviewers and items assessed as fully, partially or not reported. Mean percentages of items reported were compared between journal types and years with an unequal variance t-test. Individual items and sub-items were compared with a chi-square test. From an initial cohort of 956, 236 papers were included: 120 from 2009 (SUPP; n = 52, nonSUPP; n = 68), 116 from 2015 (SUPP; n = 61, nonSUPP; n = 55). The percentage of fully reported items was similar between journal types in 2009 (SUPP: 55.3 ± 11.5% [SD]; nonSUPP: 51.8 ± 9.0%; p = 0.07, 95% CI of mean difference -0.3-7.3%) and 2015 (SUPP: 60.5 ± 11.2%; nonSUPP; 60.2 ± 10.0%; p = 0.89, 95%CI -3.6-4.2%). The small increase in fully reported items between years was similar for both journal types (p = 0.09, 95% CI -0.5-4.3%). No paper fully reported 100% of items on the ARRIVE checklist and measures associated with bias were poorly reported. These results suggest that journal support for the ARRIVE guidelines has not resulted in a meaningful improvement in reporting quality, contributing to ongoing waste in animal research.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Flow diagram of paper selection process.
Papers were selected from studies reporting research in anesthesia, analgesia and animal welfare from 5 veterinary journals.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Bar graph of papers fully reporting individual items from the ARRIVE checklist.
Data from papers published in 2015 were pooled from ARRIVE supporting (SUPP, n = 61 papers) and non-supporting (nonSUPP, n = 55 papers) journals. Broken horizontal lines indicate reporting quality thresholds: excellent (> 80%), average (50–80%) and poor (< 50%) [12].
Fig 3
Fig 3. Radar plot of ARRIVE checklist sub-items associated with bias reported in ARRIVE supporting (SUPP) and non-supporting (nonSUPP) journals in 2015.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant awarded to DSJP (ID: 424022-2013) http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/index_eng.asp Fondation J.-Louis Lévesque operating grant awarded to DSJP. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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