Updating guidance for reporting systematic reviews: development of the PRISMA 2020 statement - PubMed (original) (raw)

Updating guidance for reporting systematic reviews: development of the PRISMA 2020 statement

Matthew J Page et al. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the processes used to update the PRISMA 2009 statement for reporting systematic reviews, present results of a survey conducted to inform the update, summarize decisions made at the PRISMA update meeting, and describe and justify changes made to the guideline.

Methods: We reviewed 60 documents with reporting guidance for systematic reviews to generate suggested modifications to the PRISMA 2009 statement. We invited 220 systematic review methodologists and journal editors to complete a survey about the suggested modifications. The results of these projects were discussed at a 21-member in-person meeting. Following the meeting, we drafted the PRISMA 2020 statement and refined it based on feedback from co-authors and a convenience sample of 15 systematic reviewers.

Results: The review of 60 documents revealed that all topics addressed by the PRISMA 2009 statement could be modified. Of the 110 survey respondents, more than 66% recommended keeping six of the original checklist items as they were and modifying 15 of them using wording suggested by us. Attendees at the in-person meeting supported the revised wording for several items but suggested rewording for most to enhance clarity, and further refinements were made over six drafts of the guideline.

Conclusions: The PRISMA 2020 statement consists of updated reporting guidance for systematic reviews. We hope that providing this detailed description of the development process will enhance the acceptance and uptake of the guideline and assist those developing and updating future reporting guidelines.

Keywords: Meta-analysis; Reporting guidelines; Reproducibility; Systematic reviews; Transparency.

Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi\_disclosure.pdf and declare: MJP and DM are editorial board members for the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology; DM is chair of the EQUATOR Network, IB is adjunct director of the French EQUATOR Centre and TCH is co-director of the Australasian EQUATOR Centre, which advocate for the use of reporting guidelines to improve the quality of reporting in research articles. TCH has received personal fees from Elsevier outside the submitted work. JMT received salary from Evidence Partners Inc., creators of DistillerSR software for systematic reviews; Evidence Partners Inc. was not involved in the design or outcomes of the statement and the views expressed solely represent those of the author.

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