Minimum reporting standards can promote animal welfare and data quality in biologging research

This app provides a tool for reporting metadata about biologging instruments. It should be used by researchers who do not provide metadata through another avenue, such as Movebank. When you have filled out the checklist, you will be able to download your answers as a .json file, which can be included as supplemental material with your article.

Using generalizations from the known effects of biologging instruments across taxa, we collated a list of instrument characteristics for consideration throughout the process of instrument development, deployment, and data dissemination. Reporting characteristics such as the ratio between instrument/animal body mass or the ratio between instrument/animal cross-sectional area, can help to evaluate, update, and develop “rules of thumb” that can be useful when developing new instruments and instrumenting new species.

As biologging researchers, we are aware of the burden of additional bureaucracy imposed by reporting standards. We have attempted to be thoughtfully exclusive in selecting the reporting checklist categories so as to decrease the burden on researchers who may adopt it. The categories aim to provide structure and facilitate transparency, balancing the complexity of biologging tools with the highest priorities for future research.

About

This checklist is associated with Payne et al.: Towards a minimum reporting standard to promote animal welfare and data quality in biologging research.

The application was developed by Allison Payne, adapted from similar applications created for the Transparency Checklist and the PRISMA Checklist The full source code for the Shiny app is available via the GitHub repository.