Reporting guidelines have been developed for different study designs examples include CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and STARD for studies of diagnostic accuracy. Supplementary electronic-only material should be submitted and sent for peer review simultaneously with the primary manuscript.
Other types of articles, such as meta-analyses, may require different formats, while case reports, narrative reviews, and editorials may have less structured or unstructured formats.Įlectronic formats have created opportunities for adding details or sections, layering information, cross-linking, or extracting portions of articles in electronic versions. Articles often need subheadings within these sections to further organize their content. This so-called “IMRAD” structure is not an arbitrary publication format but a reflection of the process of scientific discovery. The text of articles reporting original research is usually divided into Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.
