Characteristics of authorships in oral health group systematic reviews

Article type
Authors
Eachempati P1, Kiran Kumar K1, Kumbargere Nagraj S1
1Faculty of Dentistry, Melaka Manipal Medical College, Malaysia
Abstract
Background:
The Cochrane Oral Health Review Group comprises an international network of healthcare professionals, researchers and consumers preparing, maintaining, and disseminating systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials in oral health (www.ohg.cochrane.org). Although the Cochrane collaboration is spread globally, there are still certain parts of the world that need to be more aware of it.

Objectives:
To identify the authorship characteristics in the Oral Health Group reviews.

Methods:
The number of authors were calculated using 164 full reviews, 59 protocols and 9 registered titles from Archie (Cochrane's information management system) on 26 March 2014. Author characteristics of the 164 reviews were recorded in terms of authorships, location and work set up. Data were entered in Microsoft excel and results were obtained.

Results:
A total of 833 authors were identified. Among the 164 reviews, 523 (61.38%) authorships were from the United Kingdom, 60 (7.04%) from Brazil and 55 (6.46%) from China. Dividing into continents, 73.9% of authorships were from Europe, 11.73% from Asia, 7.1% from South America, 4.9% from North America, 1.6% from Oceania and 0.5% from Africa. With regard to work set up: 76.5% of the authorships were affiliated to a university, 13.5% were from the Cochrane Collaboration, 8.5% from a hospital setting and only 1.29 % were from private practice.

Conclusions:
From the results it is evident that most of the authorships in the Oral Health Group are from Europe, with the United Kingdom in the lead. Most of the authorships were affiliated to Universities. Although the authors in the Oral Health Group showed wide global distribution, spread of awareness in Asia, America, Africa and Oceania is needed. Clinicians from private practices/clinics and those in hospital settings need to be targeted when spreading awareness regarding the Oral Health Group's systematic reviews.