The initially published search results did not match the most current results from PubMed, as perhaps the search algorithms changed from initial research to publication. Therefore, in the interest of transparency, we have updated the article accordingly.
Please see the revised sections – The Result section of the abstract, the correct values in Table 1, and the updated Results section. All of which are provided below.
Results: The formula estimated that each SLR costs approximately $141,194.80. We found that on average, the ten largest pharmaceutical companies write 41.71 and the ten major academic institutions publish 177.32 SLRs per year. On average, the total cost of all SLRs per year to each academic institution amounts to $25,036,661.94 and for each pharmaceutical company is $5,889,235.11.
Table 1.
The number of comparative studies performed by the top 10 NIH-funded research institutions and the top 10 largest pharmaceutical companies by revenue. Example of PubMed query: (meta analysis OR systematic review OR "comparative effectiveness”) AND (“Roche”[ad]) AND (“2013/01/01"[PDat]: "2018/12/31"[PDat]).
| Average | NIH-funded research institution | Number of articles in the last 5 years | Company | Number of articles in the last 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johns Hopkins University | 1238 | J&J (Janssen) | 152 | |
| University of Michigan | 1163 | Roche | 80 | |
| University of Pittsburgh | 927 | Pfizer | 223 | |
| Washington University in St. Louis | 198 | Novartis | 186 | |
| Stanford University | 1082 | Sanofi | 98 | |
| University of California, San Francisco | 330 | GSK | 170 | |
| University of Pennsylvania | 1152 | Merck | 120 | |
| Massachusetts General Hospital | 1163 | AbbVie | 41 | |
| Brigham and Women's Hospital | 1338 | Bayer | 38 | |
| University of California San Diego | 275 | Abbot | 60 | |
| 5 year average | 886.60 | 116.80 | ||
| 1 year average | 177.32 | 23.36 | ||
Results
We found that on average, each major academic institution will publish 177.32 and each pharmaceutical company will publish 23.36 SLRs per year (Table 1). According to our formula, each single SLR costs $141,194.80 ($82,090 X 1.72). Given that 44% of meta-analyses in the pharmaceutical industry go unpublished (i.e., Pr(unbpub) is 0.44), we estimate the pharmaceutical industry publishes 41.71 studies, on average, per year. Therefore, the total cost of all SLRs per year for each pharmaceutical company averages $5,889,235.11, and each academic institution averages $25,036,661.94 ($141,194.80 X 177.32), as we assume all studies are published in academia (i.e., Pr(unpub) is 0)).