ArticleSystematic reviews2018
Evaluating characteristics of PROSPERO records as predictors of eventual publication of non-Cochrane systematic reviews: a meta-epidemiological study protocol.
Article in Systematic reviews, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 3 of them syntheses 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
8 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Variations in definitions used for describing restrictive care practices (seclusion and restraint) in adult mental health inpatient units: a systematic review and content analysis.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Pooled it
- Evolution of appraisal tool usage preferences in PROSPERO records: a study of non-Cochrane systematic reviews.BMC medical research methodology · 2023Pooled it
- In-hospital mortality and poor outcome after surgical clipping and endovascular coiling for aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage using nationwide databases: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Neurosurgical review · 2020Pooled it
- How long does it take to complete and publish a systematic review of animal studies?BMC medical research methodology · 2025Article
- Protocol registration issues of systematic review and meta-analysis studies: a survey of global researchers.BMC medical research methodology · 2020Article
- An assessment of the extent to which the contents of PROSPERO records meet the systematic review protocol reporting items in PRISMA-P.F1000Research · 2020Article
- Evolution of international collaborative research efforts to develop non-Cochrane systematic reviews.PloS one · 2019Article
- Partially systematic thoughts on the history of systematic reviews.Systematic reviews · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEpidemiology and the reporting characteristics of systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) are well known. However, no study has analyzed the influence of protocol features on the probability that a study's results will be finally reported, thereby indirectly assessing the reporting bias of International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) registration records.
objectiveThe objective of this study is to explore which factors are associated with a higher probability that results derived from a non-Cochrane PROSPERO registration record for a systematic review will be finally reported as an original article in a scientific journal. METHODS/
designThe PROSPERO repository will be web scraped to automatically and iteratively obtain all completed non-Cochrane registration records stored from February 2011 to December 2017. Downloaded records will be screened, and those with less than 90% fulfilled or are duplicated (i.e., those sharing titles and reviewers) will be excluded. Manual and human-supervised automatic methods will be used for data extraction, depending on the data source (fields of PROSPERO registration records, bibliometric databases, etc.). Records will be classified into published, discontinued, and abandoned review subgroups. All articles derived from published reviews will be obtained through multiple parallel searches using the full protocol "title" and/or "list reviewers" in MEDLINE/PubMed databases and Google Scholar. Reviewer, author, article, and journal metadata will be obtained using different sources. R and Python programming and analysis languages will be used to describe the datasets; perform text mining, machine learning, and deep learning analyses; and visualize the data. We will report the study according to the recommendations for meta-epidemiological studies adapted from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement for SRs and MAs. DISCUSSION: This meta-epidemiological study will explore, for the first time, characteristics of PROSPERO records that may be associated with the publication of a completed systematic review. The evidence may help to improve review workflow performance in terms of research topic selection, decision-making regarding team selection, planning relationships with funding sources, implementing literature search strategies, and efficient data extraction and analysis. We expect to make our results, datasets, and R and Python code scripts publicly available during the third quarter of 2018.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.