Is Quality and Completeness of Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Published in High Impact Radiology Journals Associated with Citation Rates?

The purpose of this study is to determine whether study quality and completeness of reporting of systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses (MA) published in high impact factor (IF) radiology journals is associated with citation rates.All SR and MA published in English between Jan 2007–Dec 2011, in radiology journals with an IF >2.75, were identified on Ovid MEDLINE. The Assessing the Methodologic Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) checklist for study quality, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist for study completeness, was applied to each SR & MA. Each SR & MA was then searched in Google Scholar to yield a citation rate. Spearman correlation coefficients were used to assess the relationship between AMSTAR and PRISMA results with citation rate. Multivariate analyses were performed to account for the effect of journal IF and journal 5-year IF on correlation with citation rate. Values were reported as medians with interquartile range (IQR) provided.=0.006) respectively.There is a positive correlation between the quality and the completeness of a reported SR or MA with citation rate which persists when adjusted for journal IF and journal 5-year IF