SynthesisSystematic reviews2024
Investigate the relationship between the retraction reasons and the quality of methodology in non-Cochrane retracted systematic reviews: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Systematic reviews, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 2 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, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Retractions of Health Economic Evaluations: A Systematic Review.PharmacoEconomics - open · 2026Pooled it
- Artificial intelligence in the retraction spotlight: trends, causes and consequences of withdrawn AI literature through a systematic bibliometric review.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Pooled it
- Retraction Analysis in Social Media Research: A Scopus Based Data From 2011 to 2025.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- Retracted Publications Related to Statistics: A Scopus-Based Bibliometric Analysis.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- Comparative Bibliometric Analysis of Herbal Medicine Research in Chinese and Iranian Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Clinical Trials : Short title: Iranian and Chinese CAM Trials.Galen medical journal · 2026Article
- Meta-Analyses under the Microscope: Strengthening Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses in Andrology through Methodological Rigor.The world journal of men's health · 2025Article
- Association between physician burnout and patient safety: study protocol for an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Determinants of multimodal fake review generation in China's E-commerce platforms.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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
backgroundThis systematic review aimed to investigate the relationship between retraction status and the methodology quality in the retracted non-Cochrane systematic review.
methodPubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched with keywords including systematic review, meta-analysis, and retraction or retracted as a type of publication until September 2023. There were no time or language restrictions. Non-Cochrane medical systematic review studies that were retracted were included in the present study. The data related to the retraction status of the articles were extracted from the retraction notice and Retraction Watch, and the quality of the methodology was evaluated with the AMSTAR-2 checklist by two independent researchers. Data were analyzed in the Excel 2019 and SPSS 21 software.
resultOf the 282 systematic reviews, the corresponding authors of 208 (73.75%) articles were from China. The average interval between publish and retraction of the article was about 23 months and about half of the non-Cochrane systematic reviews were retracted in the last 4 years. The most common reasons for retractions were fake peer reviews and unreliable data, respectively. Editors and publishers were the most retractors or requestors for retractions. More than 86% of the retracted non-Cochrane SRs were published in journals with an impact factor above two and had a critically low quality. Items 7, 9, and 13 among the critical items of the AMSTAR-2 checklist received the lowest scores. DISCUSSION AND
conclusionThere was a significant relationship between the reasons of retraction and the quality of the methodology (P-value < 0.05). Plagiarism software and using the Cope guidelines may decrease the time of retraction. In some countries, strict rules for promoting researchers increase the risk of misconduct. To avoid scientific errors and improve the quality of systematic reviews/meta-analyses (SRs/MAs), it is better to create protocol registration and retraction guidelines in each journal for SRs/MAs.
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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.