Compliance of systematic reviews in veterinary journals with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) literature search reporting guidelines

Ref ID 310
First Author L. C. Toews
Journal JOURNAL OF THE MEDICAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION: JMLA
Year Of Publishing 2017
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5490700/pdf/jmla-105-233.pdf
Keywords Reproducibility
Grey literature
Animal studies
Searching
Problem(s) Insufficient literature searches
Search strategy not provided
Methods not described to enable replication
Grey literature excluded
Number of systematic reviews included 75
Summary of Findings Most reviews had significant deficiencies in reporting the search process that raise questions about how these searches were conducted and ultimately cast serious doubts on the validity and reliability of reviews based on a potentially biased and incomplete body of literature. Over one-third of reviews (37%) did not search the CAB Abstracts database, and 9% of reviews searched only 1 database. Over two-thirds of reviews (65%) did not report any search for grey literature or stated that they excluded grey literature. The majority of reviews (95%) did not report a reproducible search strategy.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? Yes