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Improving the reproducibility of biomedical research is a major challenge. Transparent and accurate reporting is vital to this process; it allows readers to assess the reliability of the findings and repeat or build upon the work of other researchers. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) were developed in 2010 to help authors and journals identify the minimum information necessary to report in publications describing in vivo experiments. Despite widespread endorsement by the scientific community, the impact of ARRIVE on the transparency of reporting in animal research publications has been limited. We have revised the ARRIVE guidelines to update them and facilitate their use in practice. The revised guidelines are published alongside this paper. This explanation and elaboration document was developed as part of the revision. It provides further information about each of the 21 items in ARRIVE 2.0, including the rationale and supporting evidence for their inclusion in the guidelines, elaboration of details to report, and examples of good reporting from the published literature. This document also covers advice and best practice in the design and conduct of animal studies to support researchers in improving standards from the start of the experimental design process through to publication., The NC3Rs developed the ARRIVE guidelines in 2010 to help authors and journals identify the minimum information necessary to report in publications describing in vivo experiments. This article explains the rationale behind each item in the revised and updated ARRIVE guidelines 2019, clarifying key concepts and providing illustrative examples.

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and reproduce the methods and results. Despite considerable levels of endorsement by funders and journals over the years, adherence to the guidelines has been inconsistent, and the anticipated improvements in the quality of reporting in animal research publications have not been achieved. Here, we introduce ARRIVE 2.0. The guidelines have been updated and information reorganised to facilitate their use in practice. We used a Delphi exercise to prioritise and divide the items of the guidelines into 2 sets, the “ARRIVE Essential 10,” which constitutes the minimum requirement, and the “Recommended Set,” which describes the research context. This division facilitates improved reporting of animal research by supporting a stepwise approach to implementation. This helps journal editors and reviewers verify that the most important items are being reported in manuscripts. We have also developed the accompanying Explanation and Elaboration (E&E) document, which serves (1) to explain the rationale behind each item in the guidelines, (2) to clarify key concepts, and (3) to provide illustrative examples. We aim, through these changes, to help ensure that researchers, reviewers, and journal editors are better equipped to improve the rigour and transparency of the scientific process and thus reproducibility., The ARRIVE guidelines detail key information to include in any publication describing animal research. This Perspective article describes how the guidelines have been updated and reorganised to facilitate their use in practice.

Additional file 4. Road testing methods and results. Methodology used to road test the revised ARRIVE guidelines and E&E (as published in preprint) and how this information was used in the development of ARRIVE 2.0.

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Additional file 1. Noteworthy changes in ARRIVE 2.0. This table recapitulates noteworthy changes in the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0, compared to the original ARRIVE guidelines published in 2010.

Additional file 2. Delphi methods and results. Methodology and results of the Delphi study that was used to prioritise the items of the guidelines into the ARRIVE Essential 10 and Recommended Set.

Supplemental material for Informing efficient pilot development of animal trauma models through quality improvement strategies by Penny S Reynolds, Jacquelyn McCarter, Christopher Sweeney, Bassem M Mohammed, Donald F. Brophy, Bernard Fisher, Erika J Martin and Ramesh Natarajan in Laboratory Animals

Transition points are common in physiological processes. However the transition between normothermia and hypothermia during haemorrhagic shock has rarely been systematically quantified from intensive time series data. We estimated the critical transition point (CTP) and provided confidence intervals for core body temperature response to acute severe haemorrhage in a conscious rat model. Estimates were obtained by traditional piecewise linear regression (broken stick model) and compared to those from the more novel bent cable regression. Bent cable regression relaxes the assumption of an abrupt point transition, and thus allows the capture of a potentially gradual transition phase; the broken stick is a special case of the bent cable model. We calculated two types of confidence intervals, assuming either independent or autoregressive structure for the residuals. In spite of the severity of the haemorrhage, median temperature change was minor (0.8 C; IQR 0.57-1.31 C) and only four of 38 rats were clinically hypothermic (core temperature < 35 C). However, a transition could be estimated for 23 rats. Bent cable fits were superior when the transition appeared to be gradual rather than abrupt. In all cases, assuming independence gave incorrect uncertainty estimates of CTP. For 15 animals, neither model could be fitted because of irregular temperature profiles that did not conform to the assumption of a single transition. Arbitrary imposition of broken stick fits on a gradual transition profile and assuming independent rather than autocorrelated error may result in misleading estimates of CTP. Identification of the onset of irreversible shock will require further quantification of appropriate time-dependent physiological variables and their behaviour during haemorrhage.