Abstract:

Objective To investigate the present situation of systematic reviews and Meta-analysis published in SCI journals in the field of ophthalmology by Chinese scholars，and to provide experiences for authors who want to report this kind of studies in the future. Design Descriptive research. Participants All the systematic reviews and Meta-analysis in the field of ophthalmology published in PubMed, EMBASE database and Cochrane library. Methods PubMed, EMBASE database and Cochrane library were systematically searched for relevant studies up to 30 January 2017. After excluding duplicated and unrelated studies by reading titles，abstracts and full texts, the final included studies were categorized according to author affiliations, publication years, types of disease and so on. Main Outcome Measures Author affiliations, publication years, types of disease. Results A total of 10 551 studies were identified from the three database（PubMed 4214, EMBASE 6155, Cochrane library 182）. After excluding duplicated and unrelated studies, 442 studies were included in the final analysis. This kind of study was first published in 2004. The top three were: 2015 (100, 22.62%), 2014 (91, 20.59%) and 2016 (90, 20.36%) ranked by the number of publication. Authors coming from 52 cities participated in the publication of these articles. The top three cities were Shanghai (95, 21.49%), Beijing (45, 10.18%) and Guangzhou (38, 8.60%). A total of 126 different journals published these studies, and the top three journals were PLoS One (79, 17.87%), Molecular Vision (16, 3.62%), and BMC Ophthalmology(15, 3.39%). Retinal diseases were the most in these studies. The top three diseases were retinal diseases (168, 38.01%), glaucoma (95, 21.49%) and refractive surgery (47, 10.63%). Qualitative systematic reviews were 17 (3.85%) and Meta-analysis were 425 (96.15%). In Meta-analysis, intervention study was in 177 studies, and non-intervention studies was in 248  studies which were based on gene related studies (137) and risk factors (84). Conclusion The amount of systematic reviews and Meta-analysis in the field of ophthalmology by Chinese author has been increased year by year. The author mainly come from big cities in China, especially Shanghai and Beijing. The main research focuses on the retinal diseases and glaucoma. Non-intervention research published more than intervention studies, and the latter was based on gene related research and risk factors research.

Key words: systematic reviews, Meta-analysis, ophthalmology；SCI journal；evidence-based medicine