We appreciate Micah Peters’ insightful comments [ [1]

Citation of Peters’ letter

] on our article [ [2] Siemens W Schwarzer G Rohe MS Buroh S Meerpohl JJ Becker G. Methodological quality was critically low in 9/10 systematic reviews in advanced cancer patients—A methodological study. ]. Peters suggests exploring the association between the use of guidelines provided by Cochrane and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) or reporting guidelines (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses [PRISMA] 2009 [ [3] Moher D Liberati A Tetzlaff J Altman DG. Preferred report- ing items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. ], PRISMA 2020 [ [4] Page MJ McKenzie JE Bossuyt PM Boutron I Hoffmann TC Mulrow CD et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. ]) and the quality of systematic reviews. Here, we would like to refer to Table 3 of our article [ [2] Siemens W Schwarzer G Rohe MS Buroh S Meerpohl JJ Becker G. Methodological quality was critically low in 9/10 systematic reviews in advanced cancer patients—A methodological study. ], which in fact shows a strong association between Cochrane Reviews and the methodological quality measured by A MeaSurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 [ [5] Shea BJ Reeves BC Wells G Thuku M Hamel C Moran J et al. AMSTAR 2: a critical appraisal tool for systematic reviews that include randomised or non-randomised studies of healthcare inter- ventions, or both. ] while there was no association for systematic reviews using PRISMA (2009). It should be noted that the analysis of PRISMA 2020 was not possible in our study because we included reviews until July 2019 and all analyses were finalized in December 2019. Analyzing the association between methodological quality and the recently published PRISMA 2020 reporting guideline [ [4] Page MJ McKenzie JE Bossuyt PM Boutron I Hoffmann TC Mulrow CD et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. ] is indeed highly relevant and has to be addressed in the next few years.

Table 3Time trend for the use of PRISMA

Year 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Sample n=18 n=20 n=25 n=24 n=38 n=44 n=30 n=37 n=22 PRISMA use: yes 1 2 3 10 15 21 22 21 13 (5.6%) (10.0%) (12.0%) (41.7%) (39.5%) (47.7%) (73.3%) (56.8%) (59.1%) no 17 18 22 14 23 23 8 16 9 (94.4%) (90.0%) (88.0%) (58.3%) (60.5%) (52.3%) (26.7%) (43.2%) (40.9%)

PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses