Improving planning, design, reporting and scientific quality of animal experiments by using the Gold Standard Publication Checklist, in addition to the ARRIVE guidelines

However, not only the quality of reporting of completed animal studies needs to be improved, but also the design and execution of new experiments. With both these goals in mind, we published the Gold Standard Publication Checklist (GSPC) in May 2010, a few months before the ARRIVE guidelines appeared. In this letter, we compare the GSPC checklist with the ARRIVE Guidelines. The GSPC describes certain items in more detail, which makes it both easier to use when designing and conducting an experiment and particularly suitable for making systematic reviews of animal studies more feasible. In order to improve not only the reporting but also the planning, design, execution and thereby, the scientific quality of animal experiments, we strongly recommend to all scientists involved in animal experimentation and to editors of journals publishing animal studies to take a closer look at the contents of both the ARRIVE guidelines and GSPC, and select the set of guidelines which is most appropriate for their particular situation. LINKED ARTICLES To view the article by Kilkenny et al. visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2010.00872.x. To view the editorial by McGrath et al. visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2010.00873.x.