An assessment of the compliance of systematic review articles published in craniofacial surgery with the PRISMA statement guidelines: A systematic review

quality to be lacking in the field of surgery.Reporting guidelines are an important tool for authors to optimize the reporting of their research.Therefore, the study aim was to analyse the frequency and strength of recommendation for available reporting guidelines within surgical journals.Material and methods: A systematic review of the 198 journals within the Journal Citation Report 2014 (surgery category) published by Thomson Reuters was undertaken.The online guide for authors for each journal was screened by two independent groups and results compared.Data regarding the presence and strength of recommendation to use reporting guidelines was extracted.Preliminary results: 193 journals were included (following exclusion of duplicate journal names).These had a median impact factor of 1.526 (range 0.047 to 8.327), with 34,036 articles published in total over the twoyear window 2012-2013.62% of surgical journals made no mention of reporting guidelines within their guidance for authors.Of the 38% that did mention them, only 14% required the use of all relevant reporting guidelines.The most frequently mentioned reporting guideline was CONSORT (46 journals).The mention of reporting guidelines within the guide for authors of surgical journals needs improvement.Journals should uniformly endorse relevant reporting guidelines and update their instruction to authors to reflect this.This will likely improve methodology and quality of reporting, raising the level of scholarly discourse between authors and the scientific community and reducing frustration amongst readers.