ArticlePeerJ2023
Assessing the magnitude of changes from protocol to publication-a survey on Cochrane and non-Cochrane Systematic Reviews.
Article in PeerJ, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends in Volume, Timeliness, and Reporting Quality of Oncology Systematic and Scoping Reviews: A 25-Year Analysis.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2026Article
- What is the vibration of effects?BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2025Article
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
Objective: To explore differences between published reviews and their respective protocols in a sample of 97 non-Cochrane Systematic Reviews (non-CSRs) and 97 Cochrane Systematic Reviews (CSRs) in terms of PICOS (Patients/Population, Intervention, Comparison/Control, Outcome, Study type) elements and the extent to which they were reported. Study Design and Setting: We searched PubMed and Cochrane databases to identify non-CSRs and CSRs that were published in 2018. We then searched for their corresponding Cochrane or PROSPERO protocols. The published reviews were compared to their protocols. The primary outcome was changes from protocol to review in terms of PICOS elements. Results: We identified a total of 227 changes from protocol to review in PICOS elements, 1.11 (Standard Deviation (SD), 1.22) changes per review for CSRs and 1.23 (SD, 1.12) for non-CSRs per review. More than half of each sub-sample (54.6% of CSRs and 67.0% of non-CSRs) (Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) 12.4% [-1.3%; 26.0%]) had changes in PICOS elements. For both subsamples, approximately a third of all changes corresponded to changes related to primary outcomes. Marked differences were found between the sub-samples for the reporting of changes. 95.8% of the changes in PICOS items were not reported in the non-CSRs compared to 42.6% in the CSRs (ARR 53.2% [43.2%; 63.2%]). Conclusion: CSRs showed better results than non-CSRs in terms of the reporting of changes. Reporting of changes from protocol needs to be promoted and requires general improvement. The limitations of this study lie in its observational design. Registration: https://osf.io/6j8gd/.
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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.