ICNC2018 Abstracts & Symposia Proposals, ICNC 2014

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Reporting of Systematic Reviews and/or Meta-Analyses in Eight Child Neurology Journals- a Quantitative Bibliometric Analysis of Research Publications
Senthil Paramasivam Kumar, Kamalakshi Bhat, ZK Misri

Last modified: 2014-04-03

Abstract


Background: Child or pediatric neurology journals play a prominent role in disseminating current scientific findings for informed clinical decision-making in evidence-based child neurology (EBCN). Purpose: To perform a quantitative bibliometric analysis of articles published in child neurology journals on reporting of systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses. Methods: A systematic review of eight child neurology journals was performed through an independent blinded search of PubMed by two reviewers whose disagreements were resolved by mutual consensus method. The search strategy involved activation of ‘subject category’ filter of systematic reviews and English language articles published from Jan-Dec 2012 were included. The retrieved list of articles was scrutinized for their relevance and final selected articles were calculated for journal-specific reporting rates, evaluation/ intervention/ both, and practice/ education/ research/ administration. Results: Overall, there were 46 systematic reviews published out of 1674 articles in eight child neurology journals in 2012 at a reporting rate of 2.74%. Developmental medicine and child neurology had the highest reporting rate of 7.66% (25/326), followed by Child neuropsychology at 5.26% (4/76) and Child's nervous system at 2.21% (9/407). More systematic reviews were on evaluation (N=31), treatment (N=12) and both (N=3). All systematic reviews were practice-related, with none found on other three domains. Conclusion: This systematic review provides valuable information on existing status of reporting high quality evidence in child neurology in a one-year period. The alarmingly low reporting rates in many journals pose an important concern for EBCN, with implications for journals’ editorial and publishing policies and processes.


Keywords


evidence-based child neurology, reporting analysis, reporting trend, journals’ analysis

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