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The need for transparency and good practices in the qPCR literature

Two surveys of over 1,700 publications whose authors use quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) reveal a lack of transparent and comprehensive reporting of essential technical information. Reporting standards are significantly improved in publications that cite the Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) guidelines, although such publications are still vastly outnumbered by those that do not.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Relationship between compliance with MIQE guidelines and journal impact factor (IF).
Figure 3: MIQE impact on reporting transparency.
Figure 4: MIQE impact on commercial assays used in 2012–2013 publications.

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Acknowledgements

This publication is dedicated to the memory of the late Claudio Orlando, Department of Clinical Pathophysiology, University of Florence, Italy.

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Correspondence to Stephen A Bustin.

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Supplementary Figures, Tables and Notes

Supplementary Figures 1–8, Supplementary Tables 1–7 and Supplementary Notes 1 and 2 (PDF 504 kb)

Supplementary Data

Excel file, which has four worksheets: “2009 to 2011” containing the scores for the 2009/2011 survey, “2012 to 2013 non-MIQE” containing the scores from papers not citing the MIQE guidelines, “2012 to 2013 MIQE” containing the scores from papers citing the MIQE guidelines and “2012 to 2013 commercial” containing the scores from papers using commercial assays). (XLS 122 kb)

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Bustin, S., Benes, V., Garson, J. et al. The need for transparency and good practices in the qPCR literature. Nat Methods 10, 1063–1067 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2697

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