CONSORT / PRISMA / STROBE & Ethics Check — per manuscript

Overview

A trial reaches your reviewers without a registration number. A systematic review has no flow diagram. A case report never mentions patient consent. Each of these comes back to the editorial office as a problem after review, or worse, after publication, and each one is a question an indexer or an ethics committee will eventually ask. This service checks a manuscript against the relevant reporting guideline and the standard ethics and transparency requirements before peer review begins, so that the paper reviewers see is complete. It is for medical, nursing, public health and allied health journals, and for any journal that publishes human or animal research.

What’s Included

• Identification of the applicable reporting guideline (CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, CARE, SPIRIT, STARD, ARRIVE, SRQR and others) and a completed checklist showing which items are reported, partially reported or missing
• Verification of trial or protocol registration against the public registry, including whether registration was prospective
• Check of the ethics approval statement (committee named, reference number present) and informed consent statement
• Check of data-availability, funding, conflict-of-interest and author-contribution statements against the journal’s policy
• A missing-item list written for authors, ready to forward
• A one-paragraph summary for the editor noting anything that should stop the manuscript before review

How It Works

1. The editorial office sends the manuscript and supplementary files at submission or after initial triage.
2. We complete the check, normally within three working days.
3. The editor or managing editor forwards the missing-item list to the authors, or proceeds to review if the manuscript is complete.
4. We re-check the revised submission once, on request.
5. Pricing is per manuscript. Journals can also arrange for every clinical submission to be checked automatically as part of managing editor support.

What Stays With Your Editors

The check produces a factual list. Whether to return the manuscript to authors, proceed to review or reject is the editor’s decision. Reviewer selection and the editorial assessment remain with the journal; NeucitePress runs the compliance process.

Important Limitations

• This is a completeness check against the guideline and the journal’s policies. It does not evaluate whether the study was well designed or whether the statistics are correct; see Statistical and Methodological Review for that.
• We verify that a registration or approval reference exists and matches the manuscript. We cannot verify the contents of an ethics committee’s file.
• Guidelines are updated over time; we use the current published version at the time of the check.
• A complete manuscript is not a guarantee of acceptance, indexing or freedom from later ethical complaints.

Common Questions

Do the authors need to submit a completed checklist themselves? Many journals require it. We can check the authors’ checklist against the manuscript, or complete one ourselves if the journal does not require authors to do so.

Which registries do you check? ClinicalTrials.gov, the WHO ICTRP portal and its primary registries, PROSPERO for systematic reviews, and OSF or other protocol registries where cited.

Can this be applied to manuscripts already published? Yes, as an audit of a back issue, for journals preparing an indexing application.

Request a proposal, or begin with the Journal Health Check.