The range and prevalence of problems with systematic reviews

Systematic review of published evidence investigating problems in the conduct or reporting of systematic reviews . These problems, errors, biases or influences may potentially be attributable to stakeholders, sponsors and publishers as well as individuals comprising the project team. They may also affect the reliability or validity of the systematic review conclusions. This project aims to identify published evidence which examines these issues which could include systematic reviews, primary studies or meta-epidemiological analyses of systematic reviews. In order to avoid publication bias, grey literature from unpublished evidence will also be considered. Comprehensive bibliography searches will be used to search for relevant papers. Literature searches to expand thesaurus and free-text terms related to bias, misconduct or errors will also be complemented with pearl growing searches of relevant papers and contact with experts. This project is funded through a UK Medical Research Council Career Development Award to Lesley Uttley, University of Sheffield.