Table 1 Box 1—What PROSPERO4animals is and how to get there

The international prospective register of systematic reviews (PROSPERO; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero) is dedicated to the registration of systematic review protocols in nearly all fields of research where there is a health-related outcome. PROSPERO only accepted protocols for systematic reviews of human studies until 2018, when PROSPERO4animals, the section dedicated to systematic review protocols of animal studies, was launched. The scope of PROSPERO4animals is:

• Systematic reviews of animal studies: all submissions must aim to review evidence from animal studies. However, you may also include clinical, in vitro, or in silico studies if you plan to compare outcomes across evidence streams

• Relevance to human health: the review question must be relevant to human health. We presently do not have the scope to accept protocols of SRs investigating e.g., veterinary questions or environmental exposure reviews only. For systematic review protocols outside of our scope, the database of veterinary systematic reviews (VetSRev; https://vetsrev.nottingham.ac.uk/), SYREAF (https://syreaf.org/), or Open Science Framework, are possible alternatives

• Research purpose and a complete review team: do not submit protocols for teaching or training purposes, including student projects. All submissions are manually assessed by the PROSPERO4animals admin team, and we do not have the capacity to handle submissions for teaching purposes or student projects

As of December 4th 2023, 2282 animal systematic review protocols have been registered. PROSPERO is funded by the National Institute for Health Research and managed by the York University Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. The administration of PROSPERO4animals is handled by the authors of this paper: a team of meta-researchers dedicated to improving the quality of animal systematic reviews. In addition to the 10 tips described here, our website https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/ provides extensive guidance and additional resources on performing systematic reviews of animal studies and how to complete your registration.