ArticleEpidemiology and infection2021
The quality of systematic reviews and other synthesis in the time of COVID-19.
Article in Epidemiology and infection, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evidence Synthesis and Open Science: A Tutorial for Systematic Reviews and Beyond in Audiology Research.Journal of the American Academy of Audiology · 2026Article
- Citation Contamination by Paper Mill Articles in Systematic Reviews of the Life Sciences.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Reported methodological quality of medical systematic reviews: Development of an assessment tool (ReMarQ) and meta-research study.Research synthesis methods · 2025Article
- Why is it important to implement meta-research in universities and institutes with medical research activities?Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Article
- The methodological reporting quality in strictly randomized controlled trials for COVID-19 and precise reporting of Chinese herbal medicine formula intervention.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- Methodological and reporting quality of systematic and rapid reviews on human mpox and their utility during a public health emergency.Cochrane evidence synthesis and methods · 2024Article
- The quality of COVID-19 systematic reviews during the coronavirus 2019 pandemic: an exploratory comparison.Systematic reviews · 2024Article
- Are COVID-19 systematic reviews up to date and can we tell? A cross-sectional study.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- The currency and completeness of specialized databases of COVID-19 publications.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Most published systematic reviews of remdesivir for COVID-19 were redundant and lacked currency.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Characteristics of registered and published systematic reviews focusing on the prevention of COVID-19: a meta-research study.BMJ open · 2022Article
- A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of COVID-19 in Latin America.SOJ microbiology & infectious diseases · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
COVID-19 research has been produced at an unprecedented rate and managing what is currently known is in part being accomplished through synthesis research. Here we evaluated how the need to rapidly produce syntheses has impacted the quality of the synthesis research. Thus, we sought to identify, evaluate and map the synthesis research on COVID-19 published up to 10 July 2020. A COVID-19 literature database was created using pre-specified COVID-19 search algorithms carried out in eight databases. We identified 863 citations considered to be synthesis research for evaluation in this project. Four-hundred and thirty-nine reviews were fully assessed with A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews (AMSTAR-2) and rated as very low-quality (n = 145), low-quality (n = 80), medium-quality (n = 208) and high-quality (n = 151). The quality of these reviews fell short of what is expected for synthesis research with key domains being left out of the typical methodology. The increase in risk of bias due to non-adherence to systematic review methodology is unknown and prevents the reader from assessing the validity of the review. The responsibility to assure the quality is held by both producers and publishers of synthesis research and our findings indicate there is a need to equip readers with the expertise to evaluate the review conduct before using it for decision-making purposes.
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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.