{
  "abstract": "Acupuncture is a widely used complementary and alternative therapy around the world. 1 The number of acupuncture research studies has grown markedly over the past two decades, with >10 000 publications.2 Acupuncture is a complex intervention comprising multiple components. Transparent reporting about the details of acupuncture intervention and its implementation can contribute to a more comprehensive and objective interpretation of research findings, and enable research replications. Reporting guidelines are helpful in enhancing the usability and reproducibility of research findings by providing a minimum list of information required.3 Moreover, reporting guidelines provide detailed instructions to aid standardisation, peer review and improve the quality of research.3 With the increase in acupuncture research publications, reporting guidelines for acupuncture research have gradually been developed or are currently under development.4 We conducted a review of reporting guidelines for acupuncture research in the Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research Network, which provides a searchable database of all reporting guidelines for various types of research. Six published reporting guidelines and seven currently in development have been identified. These guidelines involve the reporting of various types of acupuncture studies, including clinical trials, case reports, systematic reviews and meta-analyses and clinical practice guidelines5–10 (table 1). A wider understanding and utilisation of reporting guidelines may have a beneficial impact on the quality of acupuncture research by raising general awareness of key methodological issues. However, of the published guidelines, only STandards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA) has been widely applied and the citation numbers of the remaining guidelines are all very low.11 Their low utilisation and, consequently, their limited impact remain a concern. An observational study of acupuncture meta-analyses found the compliance for the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) for acupuncture checklist remained suboptimal, contributing to inadequate international recognition of these studies.12 The low utilisation may be attributed to limited familiarity with these reporting guidelines and some researchers are not fully aware of the importance of using reporting guidelines. Additionally, we searched Scopus for journals related to acupuncture research to analyse journal endorsement, using terms “complementary medicine”, “alternative medicine”, “integrative medicine”, “traditional medicine”, “Chinese medicine”, “acupuncture”, “zhenjiu” and “zhenci”. Of the 40 eligible journals identified, four (10.0%) explicitly recommended authors follow STRICTA, and one (2.5%) journal advised adherence to PRISMA for acupuncture and Consensus-Based Recommendations for Case Report in Chinese Medicine. These also indicate that there is still room for improvement in the current guideline adoption and implementation. Therefore, we offer several recommendations to promote their application.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China"
      ],
      "name": "Xiaoyu Liu"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China"
      ],
      "name": "Shiyan Yan"
    }
  ],
  "title": "How to promote the application of reporting guidelines in acupuncture research",
  "uid": "31549f52-5031-5ddb-8775-96c8c1139669"
}