Has the Reporting Quality of Systematic Review Abstracts in Nursing Improved Since the Release of PRISMA for Abstracts? A Survey of High‐Profile Nursing Journals

Abstract

Background The PRISMA for Abstracts (PRISMA‐A) was developed to guide authors to present a structured abstract. However, the adherence of abstracts to these guidelines in some areas was of concern. Aims To determine whether the publication of PRISMA‐A resulted in an improvement in the abstracts reported with nursing systematic reviews (SRs). Methods This was a cross‐sectional study. We searched PubMed for randomized controlled trials–based SRs published in top‐tier nursing journals. A PRISMA‐A checklist was used to assess abstracts in the SR included. Total score on checklists, comparison of total scores between two periods, and effect factors were analyzed. Results Overall, abstract reporting compliance with PRISMA‐A has not improved significantly with the time span. Of the 81 SRs, 74.1% were structured. About half reported eligibility criteria, information sources, and description of the effect as recommended. Registration status was reported only in 4.9%. The reporting quality was significantly higher for journals with higher impact factors (p < .001). Linking Evidence to Action Although not inclusive of all SRs in the nursing field, our sample reflects the general trend that there was no significant improvement in the compliance of SR abstracts reported in nursing with the release of PRISMA‐A. There is room for improvement, as most items have not been fully reported.

There is still room for improvement in the completeness of abstract reporting according to the PRISMA-A checklist: a cross-sectional study on systematic reviews in periodontology

“…Maticic et al, in the field of anaesthesiology, and Bigna et al, in the field of general medicine, reported poor or no improvement after checklist publication [17]. In agreement with our results, other authors in different fields of medicine and dentistry reported how information about registration is often missing in SRs´abstracts [13][14][15][16]18]. The lack of registration reports is surprising, especially in the SRs published after 2013, taking into account the wide acceptance of registration databases such as PROSPERO, which from its launch in 2011 to 2017 registered more than 30,000 SRs [19].…”

“…According to our findings, a higher number of authors is related to a better quality report, and the same result was also highlighted by previous research [13,14,16,18]. In contrast, Bigna et al (2016), in top-rated medical journals, reported no association between the number of authors and the quality of the report [20].…”

“…It should be noted that the number of MAs was higher among the most recently published items that generally presented higher scores. According to what was reported by other authors in bibliometric studies about SRs [13,16,18,21], the majority of first authors belonged to European institutions. However, other articles, such as that by Wasiak et al [22], had a higher prevalence of North American first authors, whereas the most prevalent authors were from Latin America in Bassani et al [23].…”

“…These findings were consistent with those of our study that outlined how "risk of bias" and "strength and limitation of evidence" were some of the less reported items. In 2019, in an appraisal of the SRs published in top-ranked nursing journals, Wang et al found no difference in completeness before and after the PRISMA-A guideline release [16]. Maticic et al, in the field of anaesthesiology, and Bigna et al, in the field of general medicine, reported poor or no improvement after checklist publication [17].…”

Spin in Abstracts of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses of Melanoma Therapies: Cross-sectional Analysis

“…However, findings are mixed on whether the release of PRISMA for Abstracts has improved the quality of abstract reporting. Interestingly, one consistent finding across these studies [49,50] is that authors do not report all 12 PRISMA for Abstracts items. A study by O'Donohoe et al [14] found that systematic reviews published in journals with higher abstract word limits had significantly higher PRISMA for Abstracts reporting scores.…”