Most meta-analyses of drug interventions have narrow scopes and many focus on specific agents is a research paper published in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (2013). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 1.3. It has been cited 22 times, with 15 citing works in its 1-hop citation network.
ObjectiveTo assess the extent to which meta-analysis publications of drugs and biologics focus on specific named agents or even only a single agent, and identify characteristics associated with such focus.Study design and settingWe evaluated 499 articles with meta-analyses published in 2010 and estimated how many did not cover all the available comparisons of tested interventions for a given condition (not all-inclusive); focused on specific named agent(s), or focused strictly on comparisons of only one specific active agent vs. placebo/no treatment or different doses/schedules.ResultsOf 499 eligible articles, 403 (80.8%) were not all-inclusive, 214 (42.9%) covered only specific named agent(s), and 74 (14.8%) examined only comparisons with one active agent vs. placebo/no treatment or different doses/schedules. Only 39 articles (7.8%) covered all possible indications for the examined agent(s). After adjusting for type of treatment/field, focus on specific named agent(s) was associated with publication in journal venues (odds ratio [OR]: 1.95; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.17-3.26) vs. Cochrane, industry sponsoring (OR: 3.94; 95% CI: 1.66-10.66), and individual patient data analyses (OR: 6.59; 95% CI: 2.24-19.39). Individual patient data analyses primarily (29/34) focused on specific named agent(s).ConclusionThe scope of meta-analysis publications frequently is narrow and shaped to serve particular agents.
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
Base Score Contribution
0.470
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
0.843
From 13 citing papers with measurable signal
Ranked by citation count — the same ordering the engine uses when summing log1p(Cq) over citers.
DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 36% comes from its base citations and 64% from the citation network (13 citing papers contributed measurable signal).
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.
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