The EQUATOR network (https://www.equator-network.org) will hold its inaugural meeting on June 26th 2008, at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. Ahead of the meeting, BMC Medicine, the flagship
medical journal of the BMC series has published a commentary
explaining why the EQUATOR network is needed and outlining its key goals.
Commentary 
Helping editors, peer reviewers, and authors improve
the clarity, completeness, and transparency of reporting health research
David Moher, Iveta Simera, Kenneth F Schulz, John
Hoey, Douglas G Altman
BMC Medicine 2008, 6:13
(16 June 2008)
The EQUATOR network aims to enhance
the quality and transparency of health research by bringing together authors,
editors, peer reviewers, funding bodies and, crucially, developers of reporting
guidelines. In particular, EQUATOR will create a comprehensive web-based
resource of reporting tools and literature to encourage and support
collaboration in the modification and creation of guidelines, and will
establish regular assessment and auditing procedures. The BMC-series journals
already support adherence to many of the guidelines that exist to standardise
and optimise reporting of specific research methodologies, including CONSORT and MOOSE, but we warmly
welcome initiatives to standardise and improve reporting across all
methodologies in a systematic manner.
BMC Medicine, as with all of the BMC-series journals,
provides immediate, free online access to peer-reviewed biomedical research.
Thus, this new project targeted at improving transparency and clarity of
reporting fits well with our goals. We look forward to working with the EQUATOR
network in future.
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