Global mapping of overviews of systematic reviews in healthcare published between 2000 and 2020: a bibliometric analysis

Objective: To conduct a bibliometric analysis using a large sample of overviews of systematic reviews (OoSRs) and reveal research trends and areas of interest about these studies.

Study design and setting: We searched MEDLINE, Scopus and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from 1/1/2000 to 15/10/2020. We used Scopus meta-data and two authors recorded supplementary information independently. We summarized the data using frequencies with percentages.

Results: A total of 1558 studies were considered eligible for analysis. We found that the publications have been increasing yearly and their nomenclature was not uniform (the most frequent label in the title was "overview of systematic reviews"). The largest number of papers and the most cited ones were published by corresponding authors from the UK. The publications were distributed across 737 scholarly journals and many of them were published in the field of complementary/alternative medicine, psychiatry/psychology, nutrition/dietetics, and pediatrics. The co-authorship analysis revealed collaborations among countries. The most common clinical conditions were depression, diabetes, cancer, dementia, pain, cardiovascular disease, stroke, obesity, and schizophrenia.

Conclusion: OoSRs have recently become a popular approach of evidence synthesis. International collaborations between overview authors from countries with increased research productivity and countries with less research activity should be encouraged.