gms | German Medical Science

Background/research question: For systematic reviews (SRs) to be truly systematic it is essential to define their methods a priori, e.g. by registering them in PROSPERO, the international prospective register for SRs. However, PROSPERO records are not indexed in bibliographic databases nor peer-reviewed. Peer-review serves as a quality assurance measure, hence it is useful to additionally publish a protocol for the SR as a peer-reviewed article. For Cochrane reviews, publishing a protocol is mandatory, but for most non-Cochrane SRs it is optional. Our aim was to explore views of authors of non-Cochrane SRs registered in PROSPERO towards publishing SR protocols as peer-reviewed articles¹.

Methods: Contact persons of all PROSPERO records for non-Cochrane SRs registered in 2018 (N=12,531) were invited to participate in an anonymous 5-minute online survey that was administered through SurveyMonkey. The main question addressed SR authors’ views towards publishing SR protocols as peer-reviewed articles. Data were analyzed descriptively.

Results: In total, 4,223/12,531 (33.7%) invitees responded, of which 3,739/4,223 (88.5%) completed the survey. Almost half of the respondents had published or planned to publish a protocol for the SR described in their PROSPERO record as a peer-reviewed article (1,811/4,054; 44.7%). The remaining 2,243/4,054 (55.3%) respondents stated that there was no published protocol for their SR and they have not tried or plan to publish one. Of those, 66.4% (1,456/2,192) stated that there was an unpublished protocol that they followed during the conduct of their SR. The respondents had inconsistent views towards publishing protocols as peer-reviewed articles; most agreed that external feedback from peer-reviewers increases SR quality (2,899/3,739; 77.5%) but at the same time agreed that publishing a protocol in a peer-reviewed journal is not necessary if the SR is registered in PROSPERO (2,399/3,739; 64.2%). Respondents’ views towards acceptable manuscript processing times for SR protocols were consistent but far below actual manuscript processing times for SR protocols².

Conclusion: Although PROSPERO records are not peer-reviewed, many SR authors seem to consider registration in PROSPERO sufficient. Hence, awareness about the benefits of additionally publishing a SR protocol as a peer-reviewed article should be raised. Furthermore, publishers should transform the way manuscripts for protocols are being processed, so that manuscript processing times for SR protocols become acceptable for SR authors.

Competing interests: D.P. became a protocol editor of BMC Systematic Reviews in August 2019. All remaining authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this study.