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Abstract
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Over the recent years, the number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in journals has been growing significantly. The editors are usually interested in such articles, as they are sup- posed to be informative and may get good cita- tion numbers, which helps to improve the rank- ing of the journal. A systematic review which is usually written by “leading researchers” and “ex- perienced authors” in specific scientific areas should cover and analyze the latest and most complete data available on a subject and aim to help scientists in the field to find answers to cer- tain questions (1). However, in many systematic review papers, the authors try to extrapolate their interpretation of data which is originated from a tiny part of available yet valuable information on the subject of interest. In fact, the data used in such works are far from representing the real pic- ture of the matter, and a large body of documents and gray literature such as journal and seminar papers and theses (especially in non-English lan- guages) may inadvertently be neglected.
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