Imaging methods are vastly underreported in biomedical research

Guillermo Marqués; Thomas Pengo; Mark A Sanders

doi:10.7554/eLife.55133

Imaging methods are vastly underreported in biomedical research

Elife. 2020 Aug 11:9:e55133. doi: 10.7554/eLife.55133.

Authors

Guillermo Marqués¹, Thomas Pengo², Mark A Sanders¹

Affiliations

¹ University Imaging Centers and Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States.
² University of Minnesota Informatics Institute , University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States.

Abstract

A variety of microscopy techniques are used by researchers in the life and biomedical sciences. As these techniques become more powerful and more complex, it is vital that scientific articles containing images obtained with advanced microscopes include full details about how each image was obtained. To explore the reporting of such details we examined 240 original research articles published in eight journals. We found that the quality of reporting was poor, with some articles containing no information about how images were obtained, and many articles lacking important basic details. Efforts by researchers, funding agencies, journals, equipment manufacturers and staff at shared imaging facilities are required to improve the reporting of experiments that rely on microscopy techniques.

Keywords: cell biology; developmental biology; imaging; microscopy; none; reporting standards; reproducibility; science forum.

MeSH terms

Biomedical Research / statistics & numerical data*
Microscopy / methods*
Microscopy / statistics & numerical data
Publishing / statistics & numerical data*

Grants and funding

No external funding was received for this work.