Is quality and completeness of reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in high impact radiology journals associated with citation rates?

Christian B Van Der Pol,Adam S Tunis,William Petrcich,Ramez Hanna,Matthew D F Mcinnes,Terence J Quinn

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0119892

Christian B Van Der Pol, Adam S Tunis + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119892

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Mar 16, 2015
Citations: 171	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Ottawa, Ottawa Hospital

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine whether study quality and completeness of reporting of systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses (MA) published in high impact factor (IF) radiology journals is associated with citation rates.MethodsAll SR and MA published in English between Jan 2007–Dec 2011, in radiology journals with an IF >2.75, were identified on Ovid MEDLINE. The Assessing the Methodologic Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) checklist for study quality, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist for study completeness, was applied to each SR & MA. Each SR & MA was then searched in Google Scholar to yield a citation rate. Spearman correlation coefficients were used to assess the relationship between AMSTAR and PRISMA results with citation rate. Multivariate analyses were performed to account for the effect of journal IF and journal 5-year IF on correlation with citation rate. Values were reported as medians with interquartile range (IQR) provided.Results129 studies from 11 journals were included (50 SR and 79 MA). Median AMSTAR result was 8.0/11 (IQR: 5–9) and median PRISMA result was 23.0/27 (IQR: 21–25). The median citation rate for SR & MA was 0.73 citations/month post-publication (IQR: 0.40–1.17). There was a positive correlation between both AMSTAR and PRISMA results and SR & MA citation rate; ρ=0.323 (P=0.0002) and ρ=0.327 (P=0.0002) respectively. Positive correlation persisted for AMSTAR and PRISMA results after journal IF was partialed out; ρ=0.243 (P=0.006) and ρ=0.256 (P=0.004), and after journal 5-year IF was partialed out; ρ=0.235 (P=0.008) and ρ=0.243 (P=0.006) respectively.ConclusionThere is a positive correlation between the quality and the completeness of a reported SR or MA with citation rate which persists when adjusted for journal IF and journal 5-year IF.

Highlights

Impact factor (IF) is a metric that attempts to quantify the overall citation rate of a journal [1]
There is a positive correlation between the quality and the completeness of a reported systematic reviews (SR) or MA with citation rate which persists when adjusted for journal IF and journal 5-year IF
The purpose of this study is to determine whether study quality and completeness of reporting of SR & MA published in high IF radiology journals are associated with individual article citation rates

Summary

Introduction

Impact factor (IF) is a metric that attempts to quantify the overall citation rate of a journal [1]. A journal’s IF is calculated by determining the number of times the articles published in a journal over a preceding period of time are cited by indexed journals within a year, divided by the total number of “citable items” published in the journal during the same preceding period of time [14]. This calculation is often skewed by outlying articles, articles that receive a high number of post-publication citations [10,15]. The impact of any single article cannot be assumed based on the IF of the journal it was published in [16,17]

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