Commentary: Toward systematic reviews in epidemiology

Epidemiology and Reporting Characteristics of Systematic Reviews

BACKGROUND Systematic reviews (SRs) have become increasingly popular to a wide range of stakeholders. We set out to capture a representative cross-sectional sample of published SRs and examine them in terms of a broad range of epidemiological, descriptive, and reporting characteristics, including emerging aspects not previously examined. METHODS AND FINDINGS We searched Medline for SRs indexe...

Worldwide inequality in production of systematic reviews

Background: Investment in science is vital for the development and well-being of societies. This study aims to assess the scientific productivity of countries by quantifying their publication of systematic reviews taking the gross national income per capita (GNIPC) into account. Methods: Medline and ISI Web of Science were searched for systematic reviews published between 1st January 2006 an...

Systematic reviews in epidemiology: why are we so far behind?

Systematic reviews of epidemiology in diabetes: finding the evidence

BACKGROUND Methodological research to support searching for those doing systematic reviews of epidemiological studies is a relatively neglected area. Our aim was to determine how many databases it is necessary to search to ensure a comprehensive coverage of the literature in diabetes epidemiology, with the aim of examining the efficiency of searching in support of systematic reviews of the epid...

Invited Commentary Invited Commentary: Toward a More Comprehensive Social Epidemiology of Marital Trajectories and Mortality

In this issue of the Journal, Dupre et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2009;170(5):546–555) use data from a nationally representative cohort of older US adults to examine the association of current marital status, timing of first marriage, number and kind of transitions out of marriage, and durations spent in various marital statuses with the risk of all-cause mortality. Their study offers a wealth of emp...