Mullan Rebecca J, Flynn David N, Carlberg Bo, Tleyjeh Imad M, Kamath Celia C, LaBella Matthew L, Erwin Patricia J, Guyatt Gordon H, Montori Victor M
Knowledge and Encounter Research Unit, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota 55905, USA.
J Clin Epidemiol. 2009 Feb;62(2):138-42. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.08.002. Epub 2008 Nov 14.
Author contact can enhance the quality of systematic reviews. We conducted a systematic review of the practice of author contact in recently published systematic reviews to characterize its prevalence, quality, and results.
Eligible studies were systematic reviews of efficacy published in 2005-2006 in the 25 journals with the highest impact factor publishing systematic reviews in clinical medicine and the Cochrane Library, identified by searching MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library. Two researchers determined whether and why reviewers contacted authors. To assess the accuracy of the abstracted data, we surveyed reviewers by e-mail.
Forty-six (50%) of the 93 eligible systematic reviews published in top journals and 46 (85%) of the 54 eligible Cochrane reviews reported contacting authors of eligible studies. Requests were made most commonly for missing information: 40 (76%) clinical medicine reviews and 45 (98%) Cochrane reviews. One hundred and nine of 147 (74%) reviewers responded to the survey, and reported a higher rate of author contact than apparent from the published record.
Although common, author contact is not a universal feature of systematic reviews published in top journals and the Cochrane Library. The conduct and reporting of author contact purpose, procedures, and results require improvement.
与作者取得联系能够提高系统评价的质量。我们对近期发表的系统评价中与作者联系的做法进行了一项系统评价，以描述其普遍性、质量和结果。
符合条件的研究是2005 - 2006年发表在25种影响因子最高的临床医学系统评价期刊以及《考克兰图书馆》上的疗效系统评价，通过检索MEDLINE、EMBASE和《考克兰图书馆》确定。两名研究人员确定了评价者是否以及为何与作者联系。为评估摘要数据的准确性，我们通过电子邮件对评价者进行了调查。
在顶级期刊发表的93篇符合条件的系统评价中有46篇（50%），在54篇符合条件的考克兰系统评价中有46篇（85%）报告了与符合条件研究的作者取得联系。最常见的请求是索要缺失信息：40篇（76%）临床医学评价和45篇（98%）考克兰评价。147名评价者中有109名（74%）回复了调查，报告的与作者联系的比例高于发表记录显示的比例。
尽管与作者联系很常见，但它并非顶级期刊和《考克兰图书馆》发表的系统评价的普遍特征。与作者联系的目的、程序和结果的实施与报告需要改进。
