The selection of established excipients and/or polymer materials is made with an understanding that there are copious amounts of information available on formulations composed of such materials. However, our recent review of the literature and efforts to compile high-quality datasets on formulations using the well-established material PLGA revealed just how sparse the reports on drug formulations can be. As an example, we analyzed a subset of paclitaxel-loaded PLGA NPs in the literature using the Web of Science database (Table ). Paclitaxel is a chemotherapeutic approved for the treatment of melanoma, breast, lung, and ovarian cancer . Due to its low water solubility, it is often a model drug for incorporation in advanced drug delivery systems, such as polymeric NPs . We focused on three main areas of formulation development: NP preparation, characteristics of the PLGA polymer, and physicochemical characterization of the NPs. The omission of key details is striking, such as the molecular weight and lactide to glycolide ratio for the PLGA polymers used in the study formulations. Such selective reporting makes replication of the methods and comparison of results across future studies difficult. In addition, many of these studies present only select physicochemical properties of the formulation. For example, polydispersity index (PDI) of the NPs is often not reported, and in some cases, only singular values are stated (i.e., there is no measure of variation). This highlights not only the lack of standardization that is currently present in early formulation development and preclinical studies, but also the difficult task faced by formulation scientists who aim to build on the work of others.