NIH award recipients, consider leveraging the ARRIVE Essential 10 checklist—which delineates essential elements of study design—in all NIH-supported publications describing vertebrate animal and cephalopod research. NIH encouraged award recipients to use ARRIVE Essential 10 checklists in a February 10, 2023 Guide notice.
Recently, a working group to the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD) completed an assessment of rigor, transparency, and translatability in animal research. The working group made recommendations to the ACD to improve experimental design, optimize translational validity, enhance training, and increase transparency of animal model-related research studies.
The most recent ACD recommendations include a call to improve complete reporting of results of vertebrate animal and cephalopod experiments by setting expectations for the use of the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) checklist. The checklist sets the minimum amount to include in a manuscript, as without this information, reviewers and readers cannot confidently assess the reliability of the findings.
Below are the 10 criteria outlined in the checklist:
- Study design
- Sample size
- Inclusion and exclusion criteria
- Randomization
- Blinding/Masking
- Outcome measures
- Statistical methods
- Experimental animals
- Experimental procedures
- Results
Direct all inquiries to the Office of Extramural Research at grantsinfo@od.nih.gov.