List of articles

List of articles: Non-medical rapid review papers

2009 The impact of limited search procedures for systematic literature reviews — A participant-observer case study. Kitchenham, B. et al. Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2009. ESEM 2009. 3rd International Symposium 2010 Refining the systematic literature review process—two participant-observer case studies. Kitchenham, B. et al. Empirical Software Engineering December 2010, Volume 15, Issue 6, pp 618-653 2011 A rapid review method for extremely large corpora … Continue reading List of articles: Non-medical rapid review papers

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Comparisons, List of articles

Restricting the databases (or language) for a search

More a rapid review than a systematic review!  Below is a list of articles that have mainly explored the effects of restricting the database used in a search.  At the bottom there are a smaller number of articles that have explored the impact of restricting the articles used to English-language. Database restrictions The comprehensiveness of Medline and Embase computer searches. Kleijnen J et al. Pharm … Continue reading Restricting the databases (or language) for a search

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Commentary

An important point – not all systematic reviews are the same

The Evidence Synthesis Team at PenCLAHRC highlighted an important point, when they replied to a tweet of mine with the following: Are you just thinking about reviews of effectiveness? Or more complex research questions? I am frequently guilty of treating all systematic reviews as the same, when they’re clearly not.  I all too often fall into the trap of seeing all systematic reviews as being … Continue reading An important point – not all systematic reviews are the same

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Commentary

Heuristics

Two papers, two years apart covering closely related territory: Can we rely on the best trial? A comparison of individual trials and systematic reviews. Glasziou PP et al. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2010 Mar 18;10:23 How Often Does an Individual Trial Agree with Its Corresponding Meta-Analysis? A Meta-Epidemiologic Study. Tam WWS et al. PLoS ONE 9(12): e113994. Heuristics (from Wikipedia): “A heuristic technique, often called … Continue reading Heuristics

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Commentary, Overview

The unreliability of systematic reviews

Bottom line: Systematic reviews, based on published journal articles, cannot be relied upon to be accurate.   Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy Turner EH et al. N Engl J Med. 2008 Jan 17;358(3):252-60. Effect of reporting bias on meta-analyses of drug trials: reanalysis of meta-analyses Hart B et al. BMJ. 2012 Jan 3;344:d7202.   These are extremely important papers … Continue reading The unreliability of systematic reviews

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Article review

Article review: How to conduct systematic reviews more expeditiously?

How to conduct systematic reviews more expeditiously? Tsertsvadze A et al. Systematic Reviews 2015, 4:160 This paper is a great overview of the current challenges/possibilities of undertaking rapid systematic reviews.  As with my last post (Two main fronts on the speeding up of systematic reviews) it supports the two main areas of activity I had discussed but adds in a third: Application of innovative technologies … Continue reading Article review: How to conduct systematic reviews more expeditiously?

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Commentary, Overview

Two main fronts on the speeding up of systematic reviews

Yesterday was the last day of a really interesting two-day symposium on automation and systematic reviews in Bristol.  The main participants were computer scientists and systematic reviewers; I belonged in the relatively small ‘other’ group. It struck me that the focus was on breaking down the steps of systematic reviews (as seen in a few papers, one reviewed on this blog – click here) and … Continue reading Two main fronts on the speeding up of systematic reviews

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Autosynthesis, Overview

Article review: Systematic review automation technologies

In 2014 Guy Tsafnat, Paul Glasziou and others wrote the paper Systematic review automation technologies where the authors “…surveyed literature describing informatics systems that support or automate the processes of systematic review or each of the tasks of the systematic review.“ It is an excellent overview of the potential of automation in the systematic review process.  They do this by breaking down the systematic review … Continue reading Article review: Systematic review automation technologies

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Autosynthesis, List of articles

List of articles (automation, text-mining etc.)

Below is a list of articles related to increasing value in evidence synthesis.  It focuses on automation techniques such as text-mining and machine learning. There is a separate, non-automation list: List of articles 2006 Reducing workload in systematic review preparation using automated citation classification Cohen AM et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2006 Mar-Apr;13(2):206-19. 2007 Text Classification on Imbalanced Data: Application to Systematic Review … Continue reading List of articles (automation, text-mining etc.)

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External link to Website of interest: BestBETs
Website

Website of interest: BestBETs

BestBETs have been around for at least ten years and is produced by the Emergency Department of Manchester Royal Infirmary, UK.  The website states that it’s aim is: “…to provide rapid evidence-based answers to real-life clinical questions, using a systematic approach to reviewing the literature.” The methodology has been static over the years and each answer/review follows the same structure.  Using the recent review (Fluid … Continue reading Website of interest: BestBETs

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