We are delighted and honoured to take on the role as editors of the International Journal of Health Governance. In our first editorial, we would like to introduce ourselves, provide an overview of the last five years of the journal and its achievements, show how the journal has responded to the needs in the area of health governance in the COVID-19 environment and present our vision for the journal's future. We believe that our different professional backgrounds and areas of expertise will contribute to the journal's strengths and impact. Dr Irina Ibragimova has over 20 years' experience in information and communication technology (ICT) for health projects internationally (in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and Africa), and for the last two years served as a Regional Editor (Europe) for this journal. Dr Helen Phagava, MD, PhD, MPH, has a versatile experience in non-governmental, academic and clinical sectors, has participated in the numerous international health-related projects and authored more than 70 scientific publications, including two monographs. She is now a lecturer at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, TSMU, Georgia, and her recent research interests are in the field of adolescent health, nutrition and medical education.

Reporting guidelines and research frameworksTo make international scientific communication more efficient, research articles and other scientific publications should be complete, concise and clear (EASE, 2018). Established tools to achieve these are reporting guidelines for different types of research as well as research design. Over the last 20 years, more than 400 reporting guidelines have been developed, with some of them being regularly updated (Caulley et al., 2020). They help authors, peer reviewers and journal editors to improve transparency and accessibility of research, as well as to reduce research waste by making it more reproducible (Logullo et al., 2020), but also making it obvious as to what research has taken place to avoid duplication. More importantly, it helps reporting of research in such a manner that it protects both the authors and publishers of such research in avoiding potential unethical practices within both study design and the reporting of results. Such guidelines also aid literature reviewing, where comparing research methods, strengths and weaknesses of research etc. is vital. Completeness of reporting is also potentially associated with higher citation counts (Vilar o et al., 2019).Many initiators of guidelines exist, and it shows that we are heading in the right direction by making research more transparent. A leading international initiative supporting the development and application of reporting guidelines is the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Networkan "umbrella" organization that brings together researchers, medical journal editors, peer reviewers, developers of reporting guidelines, research funding bodies and other collaborators with mutual interest in improving the quality of research publications and of research itself. They define a research reporting guideline as a checklist, flow diagram or structured text to guide authors in reporting a specific type of research, developed using an explicit methodology, which presents a clear list of reporting items that should appear in a paper and explains how the list was developed. The EQUATOR Library contains a comprehensive database of reporting guidelines that can be searched by study design, by specialty and by section of report (EQUATOR. Search for reporting guidelines).This editorial reports the findings of an analysis of published articles from the last seven