PREPARE: guidelines for planning animal research and testing

There is widespread concern about the quality, reproducibility and translatability of studies involving research animals. Although there are a number of reporting guidelines available, there is very little overarching guidance on how to plan animal experiments, despite the fact that this is the logical place to start ensuring quality. In this paper we present the PREPARE guidelines: Planning Research and Experimental Procedures on Animals: Recommendations for Excellence. PREPARE covers the three broad areas which determine the quality of the preparation for animal studies: formulation, dialogue between scientists and the animal facility, and quality control of the various components in the study. Some topics overlap and the PREPARE checklist should be adapted to suit specific needs, for example in field research. Advice on use of the checklist is available on the Norecopa website, with links to guidelines for animal research and testing, at https://norecopa.no/PREPARE.

[1]  Margaret M. Smith,et al.  Considerations for the design and execution of protocols for animal research and treatment to improve reproducibility and standardization: "DEPART well-prepared and ARRIVE safely". , 2017, Osteoarthritis and cartilage.

[2]  C. Begley,et al.  Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research , 2012, Nature.

[3]  Iveta Simera,et al.  EQUATOR: reporting guidelines for health research , 2008, Open medicine : a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal.

[4]  Carl T. Bergstrom,et al.  Publication bias and the canonization of false facts , 2016, eLife.

[5]  I. Cuthill,et al.  Survey of the Quality of Experimental Design, Statistical Analysis and Reporting of Research Using Animals , 2009, PloS one.

[6]  Iain Chalmers,et al.  How to increase value and reduce waste when research priorities are set , 2014, The Lancet.

[7]  Theresa M. Wizemann,et al.  Visit the National Academies Press Online and Register For... Frontiers in Massive Data Analysis , 2022 .

[8]  David Moher,et al.  The Devil Is in the Details: Incomplete Reporting in Preclinical Animal Research , 2016, PloS one.

[9]  M. Ritskes-Hoitinga,et al.  A Gold Standard Publication Checklist to Improve the Quality of Animal Studies, to Fully Integrate the Three Rs, and to Make Systematic Reviews More Feasible , 2010, Alternatives to laboratory animals : ATLA.

[10]  Marlies Leenaars,et al.  Towards evidence based research , 2016, British Medical Journal.

[11]  W. Russell,et al.  Ethical and Scientific Considerations Regarding Animal Testing and Research , 2011, PloS one.

[12]  H. Würbel,et al.  The Researchers’ View of Scientific Rigor—Survey on the Conduct and Reporting of In Vivo Research , 2016, PloS one.

[13]  T Brattelid,et al.  Guidelines for reporting the results of experiments on fish , 2000, Laboratory animals.

[14]  Published Online.  Biomedical research: increasing value, reducing waste , 2014 .

[15]  K. J. Obrink,et al.  Animal definition: a necessity for the validity of animal experiments? , 2000, Laboratory animals.

[16]  F. Prinz,et al.  Believe it or not: how much can we rely on published data on potential drug targets? , 2011, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

[17]  Emily S. Sena,et al.  Bringing rigour to translational medicine , 2014, Nature Reviews Neurology.

[18]  L. Birke,et al.  Reporting animal use in scientific papers , 1997, Laboratory animals.

[19]  D. Howells,et al.  Can Animal Models of Disease Reliably Inform Human Studies? , 2010, PLoS medicine.

[20]  John P. A. Ioannidis,et al.  A manifesto for reproducible science , 2017, Nature Human Behaviour.

[21]  J. Garner.  The significance of meaning: why do over 90% of behavioral neuroscience results fail to translate to humans, and what can we do to fix it? , 2014, ILAR journal.

[22]  I. Cuthill,et al.  Reporting : The ARRIVE Guidelines for Reporting Animal Research , 2010 .