From QUOROM to PRISMA: A Survey of High-Impact Medical Journals' Instructions to Authors and a Review of Systematic Reviews in Anesthesia Literature
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) Statement was published to help authors improve how they report systematic reviews. It is unknown how many journals mention PRISMA in their instructions to authors, or whether stronger journal language regarding use of PRISMA improves author compliance. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: An Internet-based investigation examined the extent to which 146 leading medical journals have incorporated the PRISMA Statement into their instructions to authors. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Also, systematic reviews published in the leading anesthesiology journals and the QUOROM (QUality Of Reporting Of Meta-analyses) Statement were used to explore the hypothesis that indicating compliance with the QUOROM Statement in the manuscript is associated with improved compliance with the reporting guideline. In a sample of 146 journals publishing systematic reviews, the PRISMA Statement was referred to in the instructions to authors for 27% (40/146) of journals; more often in general and internal medicine journals (7/14; 50%) than in specialty medicine journals (33/132; 25%). In the second part of the study, 13 systematic reviews published in the leading anesthesiology journals in 2008 were included for appraisal. Mention of the QUOROM Statement in the manuscript was associated with higher compliance with the QUOROM checklist (P = 0.022). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Most of the leading medical journals used ambiguous language regarding what was expected of authors. Further improvement on quality of reporting of systematic reviews may entail journals clearly informing authors of their requirements. Stronger directions, such as requiring an indication of adherence to a research quality of reporting statement in the manuscript, may improve reporting and utility of systematic reviews.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.524 | 0.837 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.019 | 0.023 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".