Routine development of objectively derived search strategies

Hausner, Elke; Waffenschmidt, Siw; Kaiser, Thomas; Simon, Michaël

doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-19

Cited by 84 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(30 reference statements)

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“…Eight of the articles had one or more authors that were information specialists. The value of including librarians and/or other information professionals in the systematic review process is highlighted in Yoshii et al (2009), Hausner et al (2012, Delaney and Bates (2015), Foster (2015), Koffel (2015) amongst others. The concept of embedded librarianship reflects the move towards including information specialists / librarians as full collaborators within the systematic review research team because of their knowledge of search systems and information retrieval expertise.…”

Section: Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Will Web Search Engines Replace Bibliographic Databases in the Systematic Identification of Research?

Bates

Best

McQuilkin

et al. 2017

The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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Will web search engines replace bibliographic databases in the systematic identification of research? AbstractThe availability of web search engines provides opportunities in addition to those provided by bibliographic databases for identifying academic literature, but their usefulness for retrieving research is uncertain. A rigorous literature search was undertaken to investigate whether web search engines might replace bibliographic databases, using empirical research in health and social care as a case study. Eight databases and five web search engines were searched between 20 July and 6 August 2015. Sixteen unique studies that compared at least one database with at least one web search engine were examined, as well as drawing lessons from the authors' own search process. Web search engines were limited in that the searcher cannot be certain that the principles of Boolean logic will apply and they were more limited than bibliographic databases in their functions such as exporting abstracts. Recommendations are made for improving the rigour and quality of reporting studies of academic literature searching.

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Section: Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Will Web Search Engines Replace Bibliographic Databases in the Systematic Identification of Research?

Bates

Best

McQuilkin

et al. 2017

The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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“…When the search process employed is considered to be comprehensive (multiple sources and traditional techniques to identify relevant articles), the references found seem to be more representative (more journals and volumes) of the targeted pool of relevant references. This statement is supported by the findings of Simon et al [41] who compared both ways of developing a gold standard and concluded that with increasing numbers of relevant references, differences between hand-searching and SRs could be neglected. If only minor differences between hand-search-generated gold standards or SR-based quasi-gold standards were noted, this might offer the opportunity to apply methods usually used in search filter development to the routine development of search strategies.…”

Section: Final Strategymentioning

confidence: 76%

Routine development of objectively derived search strategies

et al. 2012

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Background: Over the past few years, information retrieval has become more and more professionalized, and information specialists are considered full members of a research team conducting systematic reviews. Research groups preparing systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines have been the driving force in the development of search strategies, but open questions remain regarding the transparency of the development process and the available resources. An empirically guided approach to the development of a search strategy provides a way to increase transparency and efficiency.

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“…Text mining encompasses a range of statistical approaches to textual analysis and much of its value can lie in its automation and objectivity. Procedures to develop search strategies routinely using text mining approaches are available [42–44] and these tend to focus on frequency analysis of words and phrases within records. Another approach is to generate large libraries of records and then use text mining for study identification [45].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and validation of a search filter to identify equity-focused studies: reducing the number needed to screen

Prady

Uphoff

Power

et al. 2018

BMC Med Res Methodol

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BackgroundHealth inequalities, worse health associated with social and economic disadvantage, are reported by a minority of research articles. Locating these studies when conducting an equity-focused systematic review is challenging due to a deficit in standardised terminology, indexing, and lack of validated search filters. Current reporting guidelines recommend not applying filters, meaning that increased resources are needed at the screening stage.MethodsWe aimed to design and test search filters to locate studies that reported outcomes by a social determinant of health. We developed and expanded a ‘specific terms strategy’ using keywords and subject headings compiled from recent systematic reviews that applied an equity filter. A ‘non-specific strategy’ was compiled from phrases used to describe equity analyses that were reported in titles and abstracts, and related subject headings. Gold standard evaluation and validation sets were compiled. The filters were developed in MEDLINE, adapted for Embase and tested in both. We set a target of 0.90 sensitivity (95% CI; 0.84, 0.94) in retrieving 150 gold standard validation papers. We noted the reduction in the number needed to screen in a proposed equity-focused systematic review and the proportion of equity-focused reviews we assessed in the project that applied an equity filter to their search strategy.ResultsThe specific terms strategy filtered out 93-95% of all records, and retrieved a validation set of articles with a sensitivity of 0.84 in MEDLINE (0.77, 0.89), and 0.87 (0.81, 0.92) in Embase. When combined (Boolean ‘OR’) with the non-specific strategy sensitivity was 0.92 (0.86, 0.96) in MEDLINE (Embase 0.94; 0.89, 0.97). The number needed to screen was reduced by 77% by applying the specific terms strategy, and by 59.7% (MEDLINE) and 63.5% (Embase) by applying the combined strategy. Eighty-one per cent of systematic reviews filtered studies by equity.ConclusionsA combined approach of using specific and non-specific terms is recommended if systematic reviewers wish to filter studies for reporting outcomes by social determinants. Future research should concentrate on the indexing standardisation for equity studies and further development and testing of both specific and non-specific terms for accurate study retrieval.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-018-0567-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Routine development of objectively derived search strategies

Cited by 84 publications

References 25 publications

Will Web Search Engines Replace Bibliographic Databases in the Systematic Identification of Research?

Will Web Search Engines Replace Bibliographic Databases in the Systematic Identification of Research?

Routine development of objectively derived search strategies

Development and validation of a search filter to identify equity-focused studies: reducing the number needed to screen

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