I do not know if this is the gold standard. But it is an interesting online tool:

https://amstar.ca/Amstar_Checklist.php

I am sure that this is an important tool to assess systematic reviews and meta-analysis. Thank you so much Eduardo.

AMSTAR or R-AMSTAR is the preferred one, however I have seen quite a few published articles using QQAQ. An amalgamation of R-AMSTAR along with GRADE criteria is an ideal approach in my opinion. Though PRISMA is meant for assessing reporting standards you can also use it in combination with AMSTAR and GRADE. This way you assess the methodological quality, reporting quality as well as the quality of evidence; this is a more comprehensive approach I believe

RCT studies can be analyzed by those who are familiar with the field. Grobman just published an RCT study with conclusions that all births should be induced at 39 weeks in order to lower the Cesarean rate. But if you work as a doctor or midwife, you know that the RCT is invalid because of the high rate, 5% of noncompliance with protocol, and because the way to lower CS rates is just not to do them since on low risk women they are unnecessary in the first place, and lowering the CS rate from 22% to 19% isn't significant anyway. But you would only know those things if you are a midwife, not because the RCT was not done correctly.

I declare the golden standard should be "benefiting the most majority of the universe and creatures".

Article ROBIS: A new tool to assess risk of bias in systematic revie...

Article AMSTAR 2: A critical appraisal tool for systematic reviews t...

ROBIS (Risk of Bias in Systematic Reviews) and AMSTAR (A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews; now AMSTAR 2) are the most widely used quality assessment tool for systematic reviews.

However, there is nothing like "gold standard!" guidelines to assess the quality of systematic reviews and meta-analysis.

Hi Claudio,

A common way to assess systematic reviews and/or meta-analysis is PRISMA scale.

Find attached a checklist.

Hope I helped you.

Best regards,

Nicola.

Do you send me how to use GRADE in a SR of SR?

Hi Emma Motrico . Thank you for your question.

If I were to use the GRADE approach, I'd use the following source: https://gdt.gradepro.org/app/handbook/handbook.html

Additional texts might also be useful like Meader et al. (2014) and Santesso et al. (2019). I hope this helps.

Best,

Claudio

References

Meader N, King K, Llewellyn A, Norman G, Brown J, Rodgers M, Moe-Byrne T, Higgins JP, Sowden A, Stewart G. A checklist designed to aid consistency and reproducibility of GRADE assessments: development and pilot validation. Syst Rev. 2014 Jul 24;3:82. doi: 10.1186/2046-4053-3-82. PMID: 25056145; PMCID: PMC4124503.

Santesso, N., Glenton, C., Dahm, P., Garner, P., Akl, E. A., Alper, B., ... & Kuijpers, T. (2020). GRADE guidelines 26: Informative statements to communicate the findings of systematic reviews of interventions. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 119, 126-135.