Non-financial conflicts of interest of review authors

This problem is addressed in PRISMA 2020. Standard conflict of interest disclosures in academic journals may focus on financial conflicts of interest. Systematic review authors may also have more complicated conflicts which may motivate them to conduct a systematic review. These may relate to their employment or career interests, affiliations, inclusion of own primary studies, other research bids or personal relationships to elements of the systematic review question.

Articles that support this problem:

Reporting of financial and non-financial conflicts of interest in systematic reviews on health policy and systems research: a cross sectional survey

2018 : International journal of health policy and management

Synthesizing and Appraising the Quality of the Evidence on Factors Associated with Medication Adherence in Diabetes: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews

2017 : Value in health regional issues

Most overviews of Cochrane reviews neglected potential biases from dual authorship

2016 : Journal of clinical epidemiology

When trial authors write Cochrane Reviews: competing interests need to be better managed

2014 : Cochrane database of systematic reviews

External factors may influence Cochrane reviewers when classifying therisk of bias of original reports

2020 : Journal of clinical epidemiology

Quality ratings of reviews in overviews: a comparison of reviews with and without dual (co-)authorship

2018 : Systematic reviews

Conclusions in systematic reviews of mammography for breast cancer screening and associations with review design and author characteristics

2017 : Systematic reviews

The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias

2018 : Bmj evidence-based medicine

Can Cochrane Reviews in controversial areas be biased? A sensitivity analysis based on the protocol of a Systematic Cochrane Review on low-level laser therapy in osteoarthritis

2005 : Photomedicine and laser therapy

Systematic review of spinal manipulation: A biased report

2006 : Journal of the royal society of medicine

Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason

2009 : Journal of negative results in biomedicine

Cochrane vertebroplasty review misrepresented evidence for vertebroplasty with early intervention in severely affected patients

2020 : Bmj evidence-based medicine

Association between industry sponsorship and author conflicts of interest with outcomes of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of interventions for opioid use disorder

2022 : Journal of substance abuse treatment

Adherence to conflicts of interest policy in Cochrane reviews where authors are also editorial board members: A cross-sectional analysis

2022 : Research synthesis methods