Footnotes

• Contributors The authors are experienced editors focused on drug assessment and independent pharmacotherapy research. They work for the Spanish public administration and, among other research projects, currently take part of a satellite team linked to the Cochrane Hypertension Group. The article’s provenance is directly related to these activities as Cochrane authors. Among the sources of information used to prepare this analysis, it should be stressed that most of information came from Cochrane review documents, published articles available in PubMed, email exchanges with authors, editors and publishers, and COPE/ICMJE statements. LCS conceived the paper and performed the articles searching. All authors contributed to the review of articles and to the interpretation of results. LCS is the guarantor of the article.

• Competing interests None declared.

• Patient consent Not required.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.