Data and code availability statements in systematic reviews of interventions were often missing or inaccurate: a content analysis

Ref ID 943
First Author M. J. Page
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2022
URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895435622000646?via%3Dihub
Keywords • Non-Cochrane reviews
• General medical
• Transparency
• Author
• Open data
Problem(s) • Methods not described to enable replication
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Australia
Aim To estimate the frequency of data and code availability statements in a random sample of systematic reviews with meta-analysis indexed in PubMed, Education Collection via ProQuest, Scopus via Elsevier, or Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index Expanded via Web of Science during a 4-week period (between November 2, and December 2, 2020).
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 300 included systematic reviews with meta-analysis, 86 (29%) had a data availability statement, and seven (2%) had both a data and code availability statement. In 12/93 (13%) data availability statements, authors stated that data files were available for download from the journal website or a data repository, were verified as being true. While 39/93 (42%) authors stated data were available upon request, 37/93 (40%) implied that sharing of data files was not necessary or applicable to them, most often because “all data appear in the article” or “no datasets were generated or analyzed”.
Number of systematic reviews included 300
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 2000
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description