Welcome to the ACCORD Website. On this page you can find out:
What is ACCORD and why is it needed?
ACCORD stands for ACcurate COnsensus Reporting Document. It is a tool that is in development to guide the reporting of biomedical studies using consensus methods when they are written up for publication.
Consensus methods harness the knowledge of experts and other stakeholders, such as patients, to support clinical decision-making in areas in which evidence is limited, inconsistent or absent. They do this by providing a structured way of defining the level of agreement or disagreement on specific topics. Consensus methods are used in many areas of medicine. For instance, they are often required in rare diseases and when there is little experience with a new type of treatment, and they played a role in decision-making during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, when the results from consensus studies are published, the reporting is often inconsistent and incomplete. Without clear and detailed reporting of the consensus method used, it is hard to tell how robust the approach was and whether there were any aspects of the approach that may have influenced the results in an important way. It is hoped that a reporting guideline – a checklist of items that researchers should mention when they are preparing their consensus studies for publication – will improve the completeness, transparency and consistency of the reporting of consensus studies.
What has been published about ACCORD so far?
- Read the ACCORD protocol, published in Research Integrity and Peer Review in June 2022, to find out about the process followed to develop the ACCORD guideline.
- Read the ACCORD systematic review, published in BMJ Open in August 2022, to find out what evidence is available on the reporting quality of consensus studies.
- A summary of the ACCORD systematic review was also presented at the Peer Review Congress in Chicago, IL, USA in September 2022; you can view the poster and watch a video of the authors explaining the work.
- Read the preprint of the ACCORD reporting guideline, uploaded to medRxiv in August 2023.
Who is involved in developing ACCORD?
The ACCORD Steering Committee includes clinicians, methodologists, publication professionals, patients, journal editors and publishers, and members from the pharmaceutical industry. The co-Chairs and Steering Committee members are listed below.
Co-Chairs
- Will Gattrell, Bristol Myers Squibb
- Niall Harrison, Open Health
Steering Committee
- Paul Blazey, University of British Columbia
- Keith Goldman, AbbVie
- Amit Pali Hungin, University of Newcastle
- Ellen L. Hughes, Open Health
- Patricia Logullo, University of Oxford and EQUATOR Network
- Amy Price, Stanford School of Medicine and Patient Editor, BMJ
- Esther J. van Zuuren, Leiden University Medical Centre
- Christopher C. Winchester, Oxford PharmaGenesis
- David Tovey, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
Further information and contact details
You can also follow @accordstatement on Twitter for updates on the project. If you have a question or suggestion, please email the co-Chairs: [email protected] and [email protected].
Page last updated: August 2023
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