Examination of the Publication Quality of Abstracts of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses on Measles, Published Between 2009-2023 and Indexed in the PubMed Article Database

Abstract

Background: Measles, a highly contagious, yet vaccine-preventable disease, is currently experiencing a notable resurge in numbers, in developing countries. With limited reading time, physicians often rely on structured summaries, and well-prepared abstracts can encourage them to read the full article, facilitating patient care. We aimed to examine the reporting quality of article abstracts about measles.

Methods: Indirectly/directly address measles and its vaccine, scrutinizing on systematic reviews and meta-analyses published from 2009 to the present, and indexed in the open-access PubMed article database. With the widespread use of abstract checklists like PRISMA-A in reading systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the message intended to be conveyed can be adequately delivered to the reader by abstracts only, respecting standard rules and requirements for reporting. We used a scoring system for compliance with PRISMA-A checklist in reading measles-related reviews published over the last 15 years.

Results: On average, the abstracts were “very highly” compliant with the expected reporting criteria: The year of publication (with 2020 as the timepoint) did not make any difference in reporting quality, but structured abstract were significantly more likely to convey their message in an “expected” manner, based on PRISMA-A criteria.

Conclusion: Using standard guidelines in evaluating reporting quality of different publications and emphasizing its importance for the writers and readers, alike, will be encouraging for improved presentation of original/filtered research results, with the goal of conveying valid and reliable health-related information, in a time-efficient way.