Strengthening The Organizing and Reporting of Microbiome Studies (STORMS)

Background: Human microbiome research is interdisciplinary, making concise organizing and reporting of results across the different styles of epidemiology, biology, bioinformatics, and statistics a challenge. Commonly used reporting guidelines for observational or genetic studies lack key aspects specific to microbiome studies. Methods: A multidisciplinary group of microbiome researchers reviewed elements of available reporting guidelines for observational and genetic studies, and adapted these for application to human microbiome studies. New reporting elements were developed for laboratory, bioinformatic, and statistical analysis specific to microbiome studies, and other parts of these checklists were streamlined to keep reporting manageable. Results: STORMS is a 18-item checklist for reporting on human microbiome studies, organized into six sections covering all sections of a scientific publication, presented as a table with space for author-provided details and intended for inclusion in supplementary materials. Conclusions: STORMS provides guidance for authors and standardization for interdisciplinary microbiome studies, facilitating complete and concise reporting. Availability: STORMS is downloadable as a versioned spreadsheet from storms.waldronlab.io.