title: Taking advantage of unexpected WebCONSORT results.
abstract: To estimate treatment effects, trials are initiated by randomising patients to the interventions under study and finish by comparing patient evolution. In order to improve the trial report, the CONSORT statement provides authors and peer reviewers with a guide of the essential items that would allow research replication. Additionally, WebCONSORT aims to facilitate author reporting by providing the items from the different CONSORT extensions that are relevant to the trial being reported. WebCONSORT has been estimated to improve the proportion of reported items by 0.04 (95% CI, -0.02 to 0.10), interpreted as "no important difference", in accordance with the scheduled desired scenario of a 0.15 effect size improvement. However, in a non-scheduled analysis, it was found that, despite clear instructions, around a third of manuscripts selected for trials by the editorial staff were not actually randomised trials. We argue that surprises benefit science, and that further research should be conducted in order to improve the performance of editorial staff.Please see related research: http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0736-x.
authors.affiliation: Statistics and Operations Research Department, Barcelona-Tech, UPC, c/ Jordi Girona 1, C5-213, 08034, Barcelona, Spain. erik.cobo@upc.edu.
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cobo
authors.affiliation: Statistics and Operations Research Department, Barcelona-Tech, UPC, c/ Jordi Girona 1, C5-213, 08034, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: José Antonio
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: González
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000592:standards; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D010380:Peer Review / Q000592:standards*; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: CONSORT; Clinical trials; EQUATOR; Peer review; Reporting guidelines; Research