ArticleBMC medical research methodology2017
A survey of prevalence of narrative and systematic reviews in five major medical journals.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Diagnosis or prognosis? An umbrella review of mid-trimester cervical length and spontaneous preterm birth.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2023Pooled it
- Review
- Physically Active Play as a Context for Motor Learning in Children with and Without Developmental Coordination Disorder: A Conceptual Synthesis of Cross-Domain Alignment.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- MAFLD as part of systemic metabolic dysregulation.Hepatology international · 2024Review
- How to Conduct a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: A Guide for Clinicians.Respiratory care · 2023Article
- Health in the Skies: A Narrative Review of the Issues Faced by Commercial Airline Pilots.Cureus · 2023Review
- Managing depression with complementary and alternative medicine therapies: a scientometric analysis and visualization of research activities.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Advance Care Planning in Serious Illness: A Narrative Review.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2023Review
- Stretching for Recovery from Groin Pain or Injury in Athletes: A Critical and Systematic Review.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2021Review
- Bibliometric Analysis of Neurology Articles Published in General Medicine Journals.JAMA network open · 2021Article
- Systematic vs. Narrative Reviews in Sport and Exercise Psychology: Is Either Approach Superior to the Other?Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Perspective: Network Meta-analysis Reaches Nutrition Research: Current Status, Scientific Concepts, and Future Directions.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2019Article
- Narrative reviews from a fraudulent author: reasons to retract.Intensive care medicine · 2019Article
- Primary versus secondary source of data in observational studies and heterogeneity in meta-analyses of drug effects: a survey of major medical journals.BMC medical research methodology · 2018Article
- Time to challenge the spurious hierarchy of systematic over narrative reviews?European journal of clinical investigation · 2018Article
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSystematic reviews may provide less biased evidence than narrative reviews because they observe a strict methodology, similarly to primary studies. Hence, for clinical research questions, systematic reviews should be the study design of choice. It would be important to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of narrative and systematic reviews published in prominent medical journals. Researchers and clinicians give great value to articles published in such scientific journals. This study sought to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of narrative and systematic reviews in the five highest-ranked general medical journals and investigate the associations among type of review, number of citations, and impact factor (IF).
methodsWe surveyed the five highest-ranked medical journals (The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The BMJ, and Annals of Internal Medicine) for narrative and systematic reviews published between June 2015 and June 2016. We independently selected and extracted the data from the reviews by strictly following the pre-determined eligibility criteria (Systematic and narrative reviews that focused on the management of diseases). We conducted regression analyses to investigate the associations among review type, number of citations, and IF. We also descriptively reported narrative reviews containing some methodology that might be reproducible.
resultsTwo hundred seventy-five reviews were included: 75 (27%) systematic; 126 (46%) narrative with some methodology reported, and 74 (27%) narrative reviews. In comparison to systematic reviews, narrative reviews were more frequently published in journals with higher IF (risk ratio [RR] = 1.114 (95% CI 1.080 to 1.149). Systematic reviews received more citations than narrative reviews (group formed by narrative and narrative with some methodology reported (RR = 0.985 95% CI 0.978 to 0.991).
conclusionsNon-systematic evidence is the most prevalent type of evidence in reviews published in the five highest-ranked general medical journals. Narrative reviews were more frequently published in journals with higher IF. We recommend that journals limit their space for narrative information, and to address clinical research questions, these journals consider publishing systematic evidence exclusively.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.