Abstract
ObjectiveThe research sought to determine the prevalence of errata for drug trial publications that are included in systematic reviews, their potential value to reviews, and their accessibility via standard information retrieval methods.MethodsThe authors conducted a retrospective review of included studies from forty systematic reviews of drugs evaluated by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) Common Drug Review (CDR) in 2015. For each article that was included in the systematic reviews, we conducted searches for associated errata using the CDR review report, PubMed, and the journal publishers’ websites. The severity of errors described in errata was evaluated using a three-category scale: trivial, minor, or major. The accessibility of errata was determined by examining inclusion in bibliographic databases, costs of obtaining errata, time lag between article and erratum publication, and correction of online articles.ResultsThe 40 systematic reviews included 127 articles in total, for which 26 errata were identified. These errata described 38 errors. When classified by severity, 6 errors were major; 20 errors were minor; and 12 errors were trivial. No one database contained all the errata. On average, errata were published 211 days after the original article (range: 15–1,036 days). All were freely available. Over one-third (9/24) of online articles were uncorrected after errata publication.ConclusionErrata frequently described non-trivial errors that would either impact the interpretation of data in the article or, in fewer cases, impact the conclusions of the study. As such, it seems useful for reviewers to identify errata associated with included studies. However, publication time lag and inconsistent database indexing impair errata accessibility.
Highlights
It is uncertain how often errata for study publications contain information that is valuable for systematic reviews and whether they are retrieved through typical systematic review literature search methods
For each unique journal article identified in the reviews’ included study lists, we conducted a search for associated errata using three sources: 1. Errata identified in the Common Drug Review (CDR) reviews: We scanned the publicly accessible CDR clinical review reports to determine any errata that were identified as part of the review process
A total of 26 errata were identified for the 127 articles included in the 40 systematic reviews
Summary
It is uncertain how often errata for study publications contain information that is valuable for systematic reviews and whether they are retrieved through typical systematic review literature search methods. Previous studies examining the content of errata have found that the majority of errors reported are minor or trivial mistakes, while a smaller portion describe more serious errors that would affect the interpretation of jmla.mlanet.org. Estimates of the proportion of significant errors ranges from 6% [2] to 14% [3] to 24% [4], these studies differed in how they defined “major” errors as well as in the number and type of journals they included. Major errors are propagated in other publications, albeit at a lower rate, even after errata have been issued [3]. We identified only 1 previous study that considered errata in the context of systematic reviews [5].
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