“De trop” meta-analyses and systematic reviews in cardiopulmonary resuscitation – a way to rapidly improve authors’ citation index at a price of real science

Meta-analyses and systematic reviews (MSR) have been conceived as tools to summarize evidence on a specific health question. However, in the last years, an exaggerated number of MSRs published by scientific journals has been observed, i.e. 286 MSRs in the field of Resuscitation Science over the last 3 years, i.e. approximately 95 per year. Thus, doubts on the real scientific need of such a high number of MSRs may arise, potentially being only a way to rapidly improve authors' citation index and fame and sometimes the journals' impact factor.