An automated approach to identifying search terms for systematic reviews using keyword co‐occurrence networks

Grames, Eliza M.; Stillman, Andrew N.; Tingley, Morgan W.; Elphick, Chris S.

doi:10.1111/2041-210x.13268

“…Instead, the features provided by revtools are likely to be particularly powerful when used in combination with those of related packages. Currently, for example, it is possible to plan a search strategy with litsearchr 35 ; screen your articles with revtools; download articles using fulltext 36 ; analyze the resulting data in metafor 37 or one of the many other meta-analysis packages available in R 9 ; and present a database of study results using EviAtlas 38 . While this is encouraging, many stages of the systematic review workflow remain unsupported within R, with data extraction being a key gap.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

revtools: An R package to support article screening for evidence synthesis

Westgate

¹

2019

Research Synthesis Methods

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The field of evidence synthesis is growing rapidly, with a corresponding increase in the number of software tools and workflows to support the construction of systematic reviews, systematic maps, and meta-analyses. Despite much progress, however, a number of problems remain including slow integration of new statistical or methodological approaches into userfriendly software, low prevalence of open-source software, and poor integration among distinct software tools. These issues hinder the utility and transparency of new methods to the research community. Here I present revtools, an R package to support article screening during evidence synthesis projects. It provides tools for the import and de-duplication of bibliographic data, screening of articles by title or abstract, and visualization of article content using topic models. The software is entirely open-source and combines commandline scripting for experienced programmers with custom-built user interfaces for casual users, with further methods to support article screening to be added over time. Revtools provides free access to novel methods in an open-source environment, and represents a valuable step in expanding the capacity of R to support evidence synthesis projects. .

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“…Instead, the features provided by revtools are likely to be particularly powerful when used in combination with those of related packages. Currently, for example, it is possible to plan a search strategy with litsearchr 35 ; screen your articles with revtools; download articles using fulltext 36 ; analyze the resulting data in metafor 37 or one of the many other meta-analysis packages available in R 9 ; and present a database of study results using EviAtlas 38 . While this is encouraging, many stages of the systematic review workflow remain unsupported within R, with data extraction being a key gap.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

revtools: An R package to support article screening for evidence synthesis

Westgate

¹

2018

Preprint

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The field of evidence synthesis is growing rapidly, with a corresponding increase in the number of software tools and workflows to support the construction of systematic reviews, systematic maps, and meta-analyses. Despite much progress, however, a number of problems remain including slow integration of new statistical or methodological approaches into userfriendly software, low prevalence of open-source software, and poor integration among distinct software tools. These issues hinder the utility and transparency of new methods to the research community. Here I present revtools, an R package to support article screening during evidence synthesis projects. It provides tools for the import and de-duplication of bibliographic data, screening of articles by title or abstract, and visualization of article content using topic models. The software is entirely open-source and combines commandline scripting for experienced programmers with custom-built user interfaces for casual users, with further methods to support article screening to be added over time. Revtools provides free access to novel methods in an open-source environment, and represents a valuable step in expanding the capacity of R to support evidence synthesis projects.

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“…We will target grey literature by searching across Google Scholar, DART-Europe E-theses, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations Global ETD Search, and OpenThesis. We will use litsearchr [63,64] to search NDLTD Global ETD Search and OpenThesis with the full search string and will use simplified searches (see Table 1) for thesis databases that do not have the capacity to support the full search string. We will not search for grey literature on individual organisational websites, due to resource constraints, but also because relevant literature reviews are highly unlikely to be found here and not elsewhere.…”

Section: Grey Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Where results cannot be saved as a csv file, they will be downloaded using either Publish or Perish (www. harzi ng.com), the Grey Literature Search Recorder app (https ://www.eshac katho n.org/softw are/grey-lit-repor ter.html), litsearchr [63,64], or custom functions in R to scrape records into a.bib or.ris format where possible. Otherwise, they will be screened in place (i.e.…”

Section: Grey Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

What evidence exists on conservation actions to conserve insects? A protocol for a systematic map of literature reviews

Haddaway

¹

,

Grames

²

,

Boyes

³

et al. 2020

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Background Insects play a central role in the functioning of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and contribute to a multitude of ecosystem services in managed and unmanaged systems Even local declines of insect abundance and richness can have enormous ecological and economic consequences. Evidence-informed conservation actions are essential to prevent potential cascading consequences of insect declines, and to help declining populations recover. Policy-makers rely on syntheses of primary research, such as reviews and meta-analyses, when making decisions about which conservation actions to implement. These evidence reviews vary in their quality, and do not necessarily synthesise the full range of scientific evidence found in the primary literature, which hampers decision-making. This evidence review map will identify, catalogue, and describe evidence reviews that investigate actions and policies to conserve insect biodiversity. This will help policy makers identify relevant reviews and researchers to identify synthesis gaps. It will also generate a list of conservation actions which can feed into future synthesis projects. We will produce an interactive database of evidence reviews, acting as a bibliography for policy-makers, curate a list of insect conservation actions that have been reviewed, and identify synthesis gaps for conservation actions that have not been reviewed. Methods We will search for evidence reviews across seven large, generic bibliographic databases, a database of environmental reviews, and five grey literature resources using a search string consisting of an insect substring, a biodiversity or population response substring, an evidence synthesis substring, and a conservation substring. The results will be deduplicated and then screened at title and abstract (concurrently) and full text levels against predefined inclusion criteria. We will initially perform consistency checking on a subset of records at each level to ensure the inclusion criteria are sufficiently clear and understood by multiple reviewers. We will extract a suite of descriptive meta-data from relevant reviews, including a description of the action and information on each review’s focal taxa, biomes, and locations. If resources allow, we will apply the CEESAT critical appraisal tool for evidence reviews to assess validity of individual records and the evidence base as a whole. We will summarise our findings in an interactive database of reviews and other visualisations, including evidence atlases and heat maps (cross tabulations of the volume of evidence across two categorical variables). The findings of the evidence review map will support the identification of synthesis gaps and clusters that may warrant further attention through secondary research.

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An automated approach to identifying search terms for systematic reviews using keyword co‐occurrence networks

Cited by 214 publications

References 49 publications

revtools: An R package to support article screening for evidence synthesis

revtools: An R package to support article screening for evidence synthesis

revtools: An R package to support article screening for evidence synthesis

What evidence exists on conservation actions to conserve insects? A protocol for a systematic map of literature reviews

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