Use as directed? A comparison of software tools intended to check rigor and transparency of published work.

ABSTRACT: The causes of the reproducibility crisis include lack of standardization and transparency in scientific reporting. Checklists such as ARRIVE and CONSORT seek to improve transparency, but they are not always followed by authors and peer review often fails to identify missing items. To address these issues, there are several automated tools that have been designed to check different rigor criteria. We have conducted a broad comparison of 11 automated tools across 9 different rigor criteria from the ScreenIT group. We found some criteria, including detecting open data, where the combination of tools showed a clear winner, a tool which performed much better than other tools. In other cases, including detection of inclusion and exclusion criteria, the combination of tools exceeded the performan

SUBMITTER: Eckmann P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12904390 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature