Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Aug 1;6(1):149.
doi: 10.1186/s13643-017-0548-x.

The influence of the team in conducting a systematic review

Lesley Uttley  1 , Paul Montgomery  2
Affiliations

The influence of the team in conducting a systematic review

Lesley Uttley et al. Syst Rev. .

Abstract

There is an increasing body of research documenting flaws in many published systematic reviews' methodological and reporting conduct. When good systematic review practice is questioned, attention is rarely turned to the composition of the team that conducted the systematic review. This commentary highlights a number of relevant articles indicating how the composition of the review team could jeopardise the integrity of the systematic review study and its conclusions. Key biases require closer attention such as sponsorship bias and researcher allegiance, but there may also be less obvious affiliations in teams conducting secondary evidence-syntheses. The importance of transparency and disclosure are now firmly on the agenda for clinical trials and primary research, but the meta-biases that systematic reviews may be at risk from now require further scrutiny.

Keywords: Affiliation; Bias; Meta-bias; Research; Reviewer; Team.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Authors’ information

Lesley Uttley is a Research Fellow in Evidence Synthesis at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, UK.

Paul Montgomery is a Professor of Social Intervention at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Birmingham, UK.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable

Consent for publication

Not applicable

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References

    1. Swan J, et al. Evidence in management decisions (EMD)—advancing knowledge utilization in healthcare management. 2012.
    1. Ioannidis JP, et al. Meta-research: evaluation and improvement of research methods and practices. PLoS Biol. 2015;13(10):e1002264. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002264. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Page MJ, et al. Investigation of bias in meta-analyses due to selective inclusion of trial effect estimates: empirical study. BMJ Open. 2016;6(4):e011863. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-011863. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Flacco ME, et al. Head-to-head randomized trials are mostly industry sponsored and almost always favor the industry sponsor. J Clin Epidemiol. 2015;68(7):811–820. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2014.12.016. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Moher D, et al. Epidemiology and reporting characteristics of systematic reviews. PLoS Med. 2007;4(3):e78. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040078. - DOI - PMC - PubMed