Editorial Board

摘要

The rationale for the systematic review was that the overall quantity and quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted in Saudi Arabia in medical fields was unknown, as was stated in the paper. It was expected that the quantity would be low because some disease-specific (e.g., cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes) bibliometric studies showed that only a tiny minority of studies were trials (1–3%), and the overwhelming majority of studies were cross-sectional with major methodological weaknesses [4,5]. Additionally, regional bibliometric studies reported that Saudi Arabia is lagging behind not only western countries, but also behind regional countries like Turkey and Israel; for example, the number of publications in high-impact journals was 16 times higher, and the overall citation frequency was three times higher from Israel than from Saudi Arabia [6–8]. Actually, there is robust evi- dence to support the study rationale and to contradict the single study that was mentioned in the correspondence [9].