 The strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology, STROBE initiative developed guidelines for reporting observational studies. These guidelines include a checklist of 22 items related to the title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections of articles. Additionally, a separate explanation and elaboration document is published separately, and is freely available on the websites of PLOS Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Epidemiology. This article was authored by Eric von Elm, Douglas G. Altman, Matthias Eger, and others.