Community-developed checklists for publishing images and image analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces community-developed checklists to standardize the preparation and reporting of microscopy images and analyses, aiming to improve clarity, reproducibility, and publication quality in biomedical research.

Contribution

It provides the first unified guidelines for publishing microscopy images and analysis, enhancing transparency and reproducibility in scientific publications.

Findings

Checklists improve image clarity and reproducibility.

Guidelines increase transparency in image data reporting.

Community consensus supports standardized publication practices.

Abstract

Images document scientific discoveries and are prevalent in modern biomedical research. Microscopy imaging in particular is currently undergoing rapid technological advancements. However for scientists wishing to publish the obtained images and image analyses results, there are to date no unified guidelines. Consequently, microscopy images and image data in publications may be unclear or difficult to interpret. Here we present community-developed checklists for preparing light microscopy images and image analysis for publications. These checklists offer authors, readers, and publishers key recommendations for image formatting and annotation, color selection, data availability, and for reporting image analysis workflows. The goal of our guidelines is to increase the clarity and reproducibility of image figures and thereby heighten the quality of microscopy data is in publications.