Is Quality and Completeness of Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Published in High Impact Radiology Journals Associated with Citation Rates?

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine whether study quality and completeness of reporting of systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses (MA) published in high impact factor (IF) radiology journals is associated with citation rates.MethodsAll SR and MA published in English between Jan 2007–Dec 2011, in radiology journals with an IF >2.75, were identified on Ovid MEDLINE. The Assessing the Methodologic Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) checklist for study quality, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist for study completeness, was applied to each SR & MA. Each SR & MA was then searched in Google Scholar to yield a citation rate. Spearman correlation coefficients were used to assess the relationship between AMSTAR and PRISMA results with citation rate. Multivariate analyses were performed to account for the effect of journal IF and journal 5-year IF on correlation with citation rate. Values were reported as medians with interquartile range (IQR) provided.Results129 studies from 11 journals were included (50 SR and 79 MA). Median AMSTAR result was 8.0/11 (IQR: 5–9) and median PRISMA result was 23.0/27 (IQR: 21–25). The median citation rate for SR & MA was 0.73 citations/month post-publication (IQR: 0.40–1.17). There was a positive correlation between both AMSTAR and PRISMA results and SR & MA citation rate; ρ=0.323 (P=0.0002) and ρ=0.327 (P=0.0002) respectively. Positive correlation persisted for AMSTAR and PRISMA results after journal IF was partialed out; ρ=0.243 (P=0.006) and ρ=0.256 (P=0.004), and after journal 5-year IF was partialed out; ρ=0.235 (P=0.008) and ρ=0.243 (P=0.006) respectively.ConclusionThere is a positive correlation between the quality and the completeness of a reported SR or MA with citation rate which persists when adjusted for journal IF and journal 5-year IF.

The reporting of studies using routinely collected health data was often insufficient

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Is the Best Evidence Good Enough: Quality Assessment and Factor Analysis of Meta-Analyses on Depression

“…Previous studies evaluated the methodological quality of MAs in depression 50.2% [ 18 – 21 ] and anxiety 57.2% [ 22 ] using QUOROM checklist. In addition, the reporting quality of MAs in other fields e.g., radiology, and neurosurgery ranged between 31.1% and 85.2% using PRISMA; while the methodological quality of MAs in these references ranged between 47.3% and 72.7% using AMSTAR [ 6 , 12 , 19 , 21 , 23 , 24 ]. However, the quality evaluation of MAs in the field of depression using above tools remain uninvestigated.…”

H-index in medicine is driven by original research

“…In medicine, certain types of citable documents contributing to an author’s h- index do not represent original research, ie, primary investigation of real-life phenomena to produce new knowledge. These publications include guidelines, consensus statements, and meta-analyses, which all tend to be cited often ( 3 ). As Dimitris Tousoulis and Christodoulos Stefanadis ( 4 ) noted, this presents an important problem when assessing an author’s research activity.…”