ArticleInternational journal of health policy and management2018
Reporting of Financial and Non-financial Conflicts of Interest in Systematic Reviews on Health Policy and Systems Research: A Cross Sectional Survey.
Article in International journal of health policy and management, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 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
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reporting of conflicts of interest by authors of primary studies on health policy and systems research: a cross-sectional survey.BMJ open · 2020Pooled it
- Transparency in Conflict of Interest Meta-Research: Author Identification and Implications for Clinical Evidence.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2026Article
- A literature review of non-financial conflicts of interest in healthcare research and publication.BMC medical ethics · 2025Review
- Differences in the reporting of conflicts of interest and sponsorships in systematic reviews with meta-analyses in dentistry: an examination of factors associated with their reporting.Research integrity and peer review · 2024Article
- The Commercial Determinants of Health and Evidence Synthesis (CODES): methodological guidance for systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- Protocol for the development of guidance for collaborator and partner engagement in health care evidence syntheses.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- Article
- Identifying competing interest disclosures in systematic reviews of surgical interventions and devices: a cross-sectional survey.BMC medical research methodology · 2020Article
- Open synthesis and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSystematic reviews are increasingly used to inform health policy-making. The conflicts of interest (COI) of the authors of systematic reviews may bias their results and influence their conclusions. This may in turn lead to misguided public policies and systems level decisions. In order to mitigate the adverse impact of COI, scientific journals require authors to disclose their COIs. The objective of this study was to assess the frequency and different types of COI that authors of systematic reviews on health policy and systems research (HSPR) report.
methodsWe conducted a cross sectional survey. We searched the Health Systems Evidence (HSE) database of McMaster Health Forum for systematic reviews published in 2015. We extracted information regarding the characteristics of the systematic reviews and the associated COI disclosures. We conducted descriptive analyses.
resultsEighty percent of systematic reviews included authors' COI disclosures. Of the 160 systematic reviews that included COI disclosures, 15% had at least one author reporting at least one type of COI. The two most frequently reported types of COI were individual financial COI and individual scholarly COI (11% and 4% respectively). Institutional COIs were less commonly reported than individual COIs (3% and 15% respectively) and non-financial COIs were less commonly reported than financial COIs (6% and 14% respectively). Only one systematic review reported the COI disclosure by editors, and none reported disclosure by peer reviewers. All COI disclosures were in the form of a narrative statement in the main document and none in an online document.
conclusionA fifth of systematic reviews in HPSR do not include a COI disclosure statement, highlighting the need for journals to strengthen and/or better implement their COI disclosure policies. While only 15% of identified disclosure statements report any COI, it is not clear whether this indicates a low frequency of COI versus an underreporting of COI, or both.
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.