Does registration will help systematic reviews to be published in journals indexed by Web of Science? A current investigation based on the PROSPERO platform

Tags: Poster
Zhang Y1, Peng Y1, Sun X1, Du L1, Huang J1
1The Chinese Cochrane Center, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, China

Background and objective: The PROSPERO platform is an international prospective register platform established by the University of York in 2011. Whether registration will help systematic reviews to be published in journals indexed by Web of Science is not known. The current study aims to investigate published systematic reviews that have been registered on this platform, based on the Web of Science database.

Methods: The PROSPERO platform was searched for systematic reviews for which the review status was 'published'. The last search was performed on 11 January 2015. Two reviewers independently screened the included systematic reviews according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and extracted data. The country, journal, time between the registration date and publication date, and funding were all analyzed.

Results: A total of 239 systematic reviews were included in the data analysis. The average time between the registration date and published date was almost 14 months. These studies were from 35 countries, amongst which the UK published the most studies (n = 70), followed by Canada and Australia. All these studies were published in 175 journals, of which, PLoS One published 19 studies and ranked first, followed by the Health Technology Assessment and BMJ. With regard to the funding, 130 studies were supported by funders, while 109 studies were not supported by funders.

Conclusion: The current evidence indicates that published systematic reviews that have been registered on the PROSPERO platform are relatively few. Most of these studies are from the developed countries. It is still necessary to disseminate the importance of PROSPERO.