Journal of pediatric surgery
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In an effort to improve the reporting quality of clinical research, the Journal of Pediatric Surgery instituted specific reporting guidelines for authors beginning June 2006. This study was conducted to evaluate whether these guidelines improved reporting of observational studies. ⋯ 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.