ACCORD: New Guideline for Consensus-based Research is Published

The new ACCORD reporting guideline will help the medical and scientific communities to improve the reporting of research involving consensus methodologies. The guideline was published last week in PLOS Medicine with simultaneous presentation at the 2024 European Meeting of ISMPP.

In biomedical research, consensus is often sought among individuals with different views and experiences when developing clinical recommendations, setting priorities and making policy decisions. Consensus research is particularly important when evidence is newly emerging, inconsistent, limited or absent.

ACCORD (ACcurate COnsensus Reporting Document) offers a new best practice framework for reporting research involving consensus methods, helping to address the historical problems of poor and incomplete reporting. It will help researchers to report the key information needed to allow readers to understand the methods used, to interpret the results critically and to apply them appropriately.

A pioneering guideline

ACCORD was developed to be the first reporting guideline to be applicable across all consensus methodologies, and therefore has wide applicability across biomedicine and, potentially, beyond. It is also the first time that a reporting guideline has been initiated, led and published by publication professionals.

“ACCORD is a welcome and much-needed development, addressing common concerns and promoting transparency and best practices in the reporting of biomedical research. ISMPP is pleased to endorse ACCORD and we look forward to seeing how it benefits publication professionals – and, ultimately, patients.”

Robert Matheis, President and CEO, ISMPP

Developed through a rigorous process

The steering committee comprised clinicians, patient representatives, journal editors, consensus and guideline experts, and publication professionals. Potential checklist items were initially identified via a systematic literature review. Items were modified and validated using a modified Delphi method involving a wide range of expert stakeholders.

ACCORD was developed by an international steering committee, recruited under the auspices of ISMPP by ISMPP members Niall Harrison and Will Gattrell, who originally identified the need for a guideline.

ISMPP encourages its members and the wider scientific community to use the guideline when writing up consensus research for publication. Read the ACCORD guideline here.¹

Further information
• The ACCORD Explanation & Elaboration document, which includes examples of good reporting practice for each item, is currently available as a preprint.
• When you use the ACCORD checklist, please consider completing our short feedback survey.
• The ACCORD protocol, setting out the process to develop the ACCORD guideline, was published in Research Integrity and Peer Review in June 2022.
• The initial ACCORD systematic review to find out what evidence was available on the reporting quality of consensus studies was published in BMJ Open in August 2022.
• Additional resources can be found on the ACCORD website (https://www.ismpp.org/accord). The ACCORD protocol was registered prospectively on the Open Science Framework and the EQUATOR network website.

Thank You to the ACCORD Co-Chairs and Steering Committee!

1. Gattrell WT, Logullo P, van Zuuren EJ, Price A, Hughes EL, Blazey P, Winchester CC, Tovey D, Goldman K, Hungin AP, Harrison N. (2024) ACCORD (ACcurate COnsensus Reporting Document): A reporting guideline for consensus methods in biomedicine developed via a modified Delphi. PLoS Med 21(1): e1004326. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004326 ↩︎

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