Search strategy formulation for systematic reviews: Issues, challenges and opportunities

MacFarlane, Andrew; Russell-Rose, Tony; Shokraneh, Farhad

doi:10.1016/j.iswa.2022.200091

Cited by 29 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…To gather all evidence related to the review, Boolean queries are authored to search medical databases. Boolean queries provide reproducibility, explainability, and the benefit of filtering out articles not relevant to the research topic [39], therefore reducing the workload of unnecessary document assessments. However, constructing a high-quality Boolean query is challenging, even for experienced searchers, and the resulting queries are often sub-optimal [59].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can ChatGPT Write a Good Boolean Query for Systematic Review Literature Search?

Wang¹,

Scells²,

Koopman³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Systematic reviews are comprehensive reviews of the literature for a highly focused research question. These reviews are often treated as the highest form of evidence in evidence-based medicine, and are the key strategy to answer research questions in the medical field. To create a high-quality systematic review, complex Boolean queries are often constructed to retrieve studies for the review topic. However, it often takes a long time for systematic review researchers to construct a high quality systematic review Boolean query, and often the resulting queries are far from effective. Poor queries may lead to biased or invalid reviews, because they missed to retrieve key evidence, or to extensive increase in review costs, because they retrieved too many irrelevant studies. Recent advances in Transformer-based generative models have shown great potential to effectively follow instructions from users and generate answers based on the instructions being made. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of the latest of such models, ChatGPT, in generating effective Boolean queries for systematic review literature search. Through a number of extensive experiments on standard test collections for the task, we find that ChatGPT is capable of generating queries that lead to high search precision, although trading-off this for recall. Overall, our study demonstrates the potential of ChatGPT in generating effective Boolean queries for systematic review literature search. The ability of ChatGPT to follow complex instructions and generate queries with high precision makes it a valuable tool for researchers conducting systematic reviews, particularly for rapid reviews where time is a constraint and often trading-off higher precision for lower recall is acceptable.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can ChatGPT Write a Good Boolean Query for Systematic Review Literature Search?

Wang¹,

Scells²,

Koopman³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…We will search MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library from their dates of inception onwards. We will perform the preliminary search strategy in Ovid MEDLINE following appropriate design principles 24. An information specialist and our core team of international experts in health equity, UHC, health information systems or knowledge syntheses from Africa will review this preliminary search strategy.…”

Section: Methods and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping health service coverage inequalities in Africa: a scoping review protocol

et al. 2023

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IntroductionAddressing inequities in health service coverage is a global priority, especially with the resurgence of interest in universal health coverage. However, in Africa, which has the lowest health service coverage index, there is limited information on the progress of countries in addressing inequalities related to health services. Thus, we seek to map the evidence on inequalities in health service coverage in Africa.Methods and analysisWe will conduct a scoping review following the Joanna Briggs Institute Manual for Evidence Synthesis. We preregistered this protocol with the Open Science Framework on 26 July 2022 (https://osf.io/zd5bt). We will consider any empirical research that assesses inequalities in relation to services for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (eg, family planning), infectious diseases (eg, tuberculosis treatment) and non-communicable diseases (eg, cervical cancer screening) in Africa. We will search MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO and Cochrane Library from their inception onwards. We will also hand-search Google and Global Index Medicus, and screen reference lists of relevant studies. We will evaluate studies for eligibility and extract data from included studies using pre-piloted and standardised forms. We will further extract a core set of health service coverage indicators, which are disaggregated by place of residence, race/ethnicity/culture, occupation, gender, religion, education, socioeconomic status and social capital plus equity stratifiers. We will summarise data using a narrative approach involving thematic syntheses and descriptive statistics. We will report our findings according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews checklist.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval is not required as primary data will not be collected. This work will contribute to identifying knowledge gaps in the evidence of inequalities in health service coverage in Africa, and propose strategies that could help overcome current challenges. We will disseminate our findings to knowledge users through a publication in a peer-reviewed journal and organisation of workshops.

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“…2 A survey by Major et al showed that the design of a search strategy and the performance of an extended literature search were reported to be the most challenging aspects that researchers encountered during an SR. 26 The development of a thorough Boolean strategy algorithm including all the possible vocabulary and synonyms is a relatively complex and time-consuming process which could be overcome by implementing open research principles in SRs through the current available open research tools (PROSPERO). 27 A Boolean algorithm which is easily findable and accessible could be reused or modified by several other research teams who wish to conduct an SR on a different subject in the same research field to avoid duplication of research efforts. Interestingly, despite the presence of reporting guidelines such as PRISMA and the need for FAIRness and transparency in reporting the methodology of SRs, several studies have identified that in most SRs, a full Boolean search strategy was missing from the published articles.…”

Section: Identifying Relevant Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of open research in improving the standards of evidence synthesis: current challenges and potential solutions in systematic reviews

Martinou

Angelidi

2022

F1000Res

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Systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) are the cornerstone of evidence-based medicine and are placed at the top of the level-of-evidence pyramid. To date, there are several methodological resources available from international organizations such as the Cochrane Collaboration that aim to aid researchers in conducting high-quality secondary research and promoting reproducibility, transparency and scientific rigour. Nevertheless, researchers still face challenges in most stages of evidence synthesis. Open research and the FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) principles are rising initiatives being increasingly implemented in primary research. However, their beneficial role in secondary research is less emphasized. This article addresses how the challenges commonly faced during evidence synthesis research could be overcome using open research practices and currently available open research tools. Despite the phenomenally simple SR workflow, researchers still find tasks such as framing the SR research question, search strategy development, data extraction, and assessing for bias, challenging. The implementation of FAIR practices, including prospective registration at the PROSPERO database, abiding with the PRISMA guidelines, and making all SR data openly available could have significant benefits in avoiding duplication of effort and reducing research waste while improving the reporting standards of SRs. Additionally, this article highlights the need for further education in open research culture to overcome ethical and motivational barriers in implementing open research practices in evidence synthesis. Finally, in the era of technological breakthroughs, artificial intelligence may eventually be incorporated into the process of SRs and should abide by the FAIR standards for open research.

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Search strategy formulation for systematic reviews: Issues, challenges and opportunities

Cited by 29 publications

References 81 publications

Can ChatGPT Write a Good Boolean Query for Systematic Review Literature Search?

Can ChatGPT Write a Good Boolean Query for Systematic Review Literature Search?

Mapping health service coverage inequalities in Africa: a scoping review protocol

The role of open research in improving the standards of evidence synthesis: current challenges and potential solutions in systematic reviews

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