Stephanie PolusPriya LerbergJoshua VogelKanokwaroon WatananirunJoao Paulo SouzaMatthews MathaiA. Metin GülmezogluLudwig-Maximilians-Universitat MunchenOrganisation Mondiale de la SanteUniversitetet i OsloUniversity of Western AustraliaMahidol University2018-06-112018-06-112012-08-13PLoS ONE. Vol.7, No.8 (2012)193262032-s2.0-84865053826https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/13415In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) received a criticism for a lack of transparency and systematic methods in the development of guidelines, which were at that time perceived as substantially driven by expert opinion. In this paper we assessed the quality of maternal and perinatal health guidelines developed since then. We used the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II tool to evaluate the quality of methodological rigour and transparency of four different WHO guidelines published between 2007 and 2011. Our findings showed high scores among the most recent guidelines on maternal and perinatal health suggesting higher quality. However, there is still potential for improvement, especially in including different stakeholder views, transparency of guidelines regarding the role of the funding body and presentation of the guideline document. © 2012 Polus et al.Mahidol UniversityAgricultural and Biological SciencesBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular BiologyArticleSCOPUS10.1371/journal.pone.0038891