Inadequate diversity of information resources searched in US-affiliated systematic reviews and meta-analyses: 2005–2016

Pradhan, Richeek; Garnick, Kyle; Barkondaj, Bikramjit; Jordan, H; Ash, Arlene S.; Yu, Hong

doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2018.05.024

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…Grey literature and unpublished data help to avoid publication bias, because searching sources that only cover published results may just return more of the same evidence. By contrast, grey literature searches and searches of clinical trial registries may reduce bias by retrieving evidence from a more diverse range of sources (Pradhan et al, 2018 ). This could influence the conclusions and consequently health care decisions (Halfpenny et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literature searching methods or guidance and their application to public health topics: A narrative review

Heath

Levay

Tuvey

2021

Health Info Libraries J

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Background: Information specialists conducting searches for systematic reviews need to consider key questions around which and how many sources to search. This is particularly important for public health topics where evidence may be found in diverse sources. Objectives:The objective of this review is to give an overview of recent studies on information retrieval guidance and methods that could be applied to public health evidence and used to guide future searches. Methods: A literature search was performed in core databases and supplemented by browsing health information journals and citation searching. Results were sifted and reviewed. Results: Seventy-two papers were found and grouped into themes covering sources and search techniques. Public health topics were poorly covered in this literature. Discussion: Many researchers follow the recommendations to search multiple databases. The review topic influences decisions about sources. Additional sources covering grey literature eliminate bias but are time-consuming and difficult to search systematically. Public health searching is complex, often requiring searches in multidisciplinary sources and using additional methods.Conclusions: Search planning is advisable to enable decisions about which and how many sources to search. This could improve with more work on modelling search scenarios, particularly in public health topics, to examine where publications were found and guide future research.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literature searching methods or guidance and their application to public health topics: A narrative review

Heath

Levay

Tuvey

2021

Health Info Libraries J

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“…Unfortunately, despite the significance of PB, previous studies show that a considerable proportion of systematic reviewers in different fields, such as oncology 7 , anesthesiology 8 , dermatology 9 , cardiology 10 , and gastroenterology 11 did not try to evaluate its possible presence in their SRs and MAs. Also, a substantial proportion of SRs were found not to search resources other than published materials, hence increasing the risk of PB in their results 12 .…”

Section: Background 1-| Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Publication bias in otorhinolaryngology meta-analyses in 2021

Mohammadian

Bastaninejad

Irani

2023

Preprint

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Introduction: One concern in meta-analyses is the presence of publication bias (PB) which leads to the dissemination of inflated results. In this study, we assessed how much the meta-analyses in the field of otorhinolaryngology in 2021 evaluated the presence of PB. Methods: Six of the most influential journals in the field were selected. A search was conducted, and data were extracted from the included studies. In cases where PB was not assessed by the authors, we evaluated the risk of its presence by designing funnel plots and performing statistical tests. Results: 75 systematic reviews were included. 51% of them used at least one method for assessing the risk of PB, with the visual inspection of a funnel plot being the most frequent method used. 29% of the studies reported a high risk of PB presence. We replicated the results of 11 meta-analyses that did not assess the risk of PB and found that 63.6% were at high risk. Discussion: Our results indicate that systematic reviews published in some of the most influential journals in the field do not implement enough measures in their search strategies to reduce the risk of PB, nor do they assess the risk of its presence.

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“…Unfortunately, despite the significance of PB, previous studies show that a considerable proportion of systematic reviewers in different healthcare fields, such as oncology [ 7 ], anesthesiology [ 8 ], dermatology [ 9 ], cardiology [ 10 ], and gastroenterology [ 11 ], did not try to evaluate its possible presence in their SRs and MAs. Also, a substantial proportion of SRs were found not to search resources other than published materials, hence increasing the risk of PB in their results [ 12 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Publication bias in otorhinolaryngology meta-analyses in 2021

Mohammadian,

Bastaninejad,

Irani

2024

Syst Rev

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Introduction One concern in meta-analyses is the presence of publication bias (PB) which leads to the dissemination of inflated results. In this study, we assessed how much the meta-analyses in the field of otorhinolaryngology in 2021 evaluated the presence of PB. Methods Six of the most influential journals in the field were selected. A search was conducted, and data were extracted from the included studies. In cases where PB was not assessed by the authors, we evaluated the risk of its presence by designing funnel plots and performing statistical tests. Results Seventy-five systematic reviews were included. Fifty-one percent of them used at least one method for assessing the risk of PB, with the visual inspection of a funnel plot being the most frequent method used. Twenty-nine percent of the studies reported a high risk of PB presence. We replicated the results of 11 meta-analyses that did not assess the risk of PB and found that 63.6% were at high risk. We also found that a considerable proportion of the systematic reviews that found a high risk of PB did not take it into consideration when making conclusions and discussing their results. Discussion Our results indicate that systematic reviews published in some of the most influential journals in the field do not implement enough measures in their search strategies to reduce the risk of PB, nor do they assess the risk of its presence or take the risk of its presence into consideration when inferring their results.

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Inadequate diversity of information resources searched in US-affiliated systematic reviews and meta-analyses: 2005–2016

Cited by 4 publications

References 45 publications

Literature searching methods or guidance and their application to public health topics: A narrative review

Literature searching methods or guidance and their application to public health topics: A narrative review

Publication bias in otorhinolaryngology meta-analyses in 2021

Publication bias in otorhinolaryngology meta-analyses in 2021

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