Standardized Battery Reporting Guidelines

When I was a graduate student working on lithium-ion batteries, I would often find myself deep in the supplemental information section of papers searching for experimental details that would allow me to replicate an experiment. Even after thoroughly searching through a paper, I would sometimes still find that there would be some crucial piece information regarding, for example, cycling conditions or electrode composition missing from the paper. It was an incredibly frustrating experience that led me to start thinking about how helpful it would be to have some standardization of the data included in battery papers. A few years later I became an editor at Joule, and I still find myself scouring the supplemental information for details about experimental conditions. Even now, I am sometimes not able to find details that would allow me to better evaluate the experiments reported in manuscripts. As a journal, we are constantly asking ourselves what we can do to add value to the energy research community. I would often think about how helpful it would be as a researcher—and now as an editor—to have data transparently reported in battery papers. I realized that Joule could address this problem by developing guidelines for the reporting of battery data. Cell Press had already developed STAR Methods for structured and transparent reporting focused on the life sciences, and so the editors at Joule began developing the Battery Checklist as well as the Photovoltaic Checklist as analogs to STAR Methods. The checklists may be adopted at other journals across Cell Press. The goal of the Battery Checklist is to standardize reporting of performance metrics and promote best practices in electrochemical testing for battery papers published in Joule. The checklist recognizes the needs of the scientific community for increased clarity and transparency in reporting of data, to foster improved rigor and reproducibility in research. Our aim is that this checklist helps editors, reviewers, and readers evaluate and compare battery papers and that it aids scientists with reproducing published results. When developing the Battery Checklist, it was crucial that the battery community find the checklist to be helpful as researchers, readers, and reviewers. I, along with the rest of the Joule editorial team, would like to thank Ping Liu, Hong Li, Jeff Dahn and the members of his group, Arumugam Manthiram, Jie Xiao, and Stan Whittingham for sharing their expertise, providing their feedback, and helping to shape the Battery Checklist. At submission, authors are asked if a key point of the paper is the performance of a battery. If authors answer yes, then they are prompted to complete the Battery Checklist at the time of submission. If there is information that the checklist requests and that the authors have readily available but is not currently in the manuscript, we ask that authors add the missing information to the manuscript prior to submission. If there are any exceptions to the checklist—for example, data are not relevant for the battery type—we ask authors to please include that explanation in the checklist. The checklist will be evaluated by the editorial team and provided to reviewers. When a paper is published, the Battery Checklist will be included as part of the Supplemental Information so that readers will be able to easily assess the data presented in the paper. We recognize that there are a wide variety of batteries and have strived to keep the checklist as general and flexible as possible. As battery research is constantly advancing, we anticipate the Battery Checklist will grow and evolve with the field. We welcome your feedback and suggestions regarding the checklist. This is a new journey that we are all embarking on as a community. We hope that authors, reviewers, and readers find the Battery Checklist to be a valuable addition to papers published at Joule.