The Cochrane Collaboration at 20

Smith, Richard

doi:10.1136/bmj.f7383

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…The opportunity cost of maintaining current rigor in SRs is vast: reviews do not exist for most clinical questions (Smith, 2013), and most reviews are out of date soon after publication (Shojania et al, 2007). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automating Biomedical Evidence Synthesis: RobotReviewer

Marshall

Kuiper

Banner

et al. 2017

Proceedings of ACL 2017, System Demonstrations

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We present RobotReviewer, an open-source web-based system that uses machine learning and NLP to semi-automate biomedical evidence synthesis, to aid the practice of Evidence-Based Medicine. RobotReviewer processes full-text journal articles (PDFs) describing randomized controlled trials (RCTs). It appraises the reliability of RCTs and extracts text describing key trial characteristics (e.g., descriptions of the population) using novel NLP methods. RobotReviewer then automatically generates a report synthesising this information. Our goal is for RobotReviewer to automatically extract and synthesise the full-range of structured data needed to inform evidence-based practice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automating Biomedical Evidence Synthesis: RobotReviewer

Marshall

Kuiper

Banner

et al. 2017

Proceedings of ACL 2017, System Demonstrations

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“…For the purposes of this methodological review, Cochrane reviews were regarded as ideal since they have consistent methodology, reporting standards and are widely accepted as the gold standard of systematic reviews. 19 …”

Section: Discussion and Disseminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of pragmatism in explaining heterogeneity in meta-analyses of randomised trials: a protocol for a cross-sectional methodological review

et al. 2017

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IntroductionThere has been increasing interest in pragmatic trials methodology. As a result, tools such as the Pragmatic-Explanatory Continuum Indicator Summary-2 (PRECIS-2) are being used prospectively to help researchers design randomised controlled trials (RCTs) within the pragmatic-explanatory continuum. There may be value in applying the PRECIS-2 tool retrospectively in a systematic review setting as it could provide important information about how to pool data based on the degree of pragmatism.ObjectivesTo investigate the role of pragmatism as a source of heterogeneity in systematic reviews by (1) identifying systematic reviews with meta-analyses of RCTs that have moderate to high heterogeneity, (2) applying PRECIS-2 to RCTs of systematic reviews, (3) evaluating the inter-rater reliability of PRECIS-2, (4) determining how much of this heterogeneity may be explained by pragmatism.MethodsA cross-sectional methodological review will be conducted on systematic reviews of RCTs published in the Cochrane Library from 1 January 2014 to 1 January 2017. Included systematic reviews will have a minimum of 10 RCTs in the meta-analysis of the primary outcome and moderate to substantial heterogeneity (I2≥50%). Of the eligible systematic reviews, a random selection of 10 will be included for quantitative evaluation. In each systematic review, RCTs will be scored using the PRECIS-2 tool, in duplicate. Agreement between raters will be measured using the intraclass correlation coefficient. Subgroup analyses and meta-regression will be used to evaluate how much variability in the primary outcome may be due to pragmatism.DisseminationThis review will be among the first to evaluate the PRECIS-2 tool in a systematic review setting. Results from this research will provide inter-rater reliability information about PRECIS-2 and may be used to provide methodological guidance when dealing with pragmatism in systematic reviews and subgroup considerations. On completion, this review will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.

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“…Type of studies: Only Cochrane systematic reviews will be included. These reviews will be selected, because they are considered the reference standard for conducting and reporting such research studies [ 38 ]. We want to include a full year of Cochrane systematic reviews.…”

Section: Methods For the Cross-sectional Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Contacting of authors by systematic reviewers: protocol for a cross-sectional study and a survey

Reynders

Ladu²,

Girolamo

2017

Syst Rev

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BackgroundSynthesizing outcomes of underreported primary studies can pose a serious threat to the validity of outcomes and conclusions of systematic reviews. To address this problem, the Cochrane Collaboration recommends reviewers to contact authors of eligible primary studies to obtain additional information on poorly reported items. In this protocol, we present a cross-sectional study and a survey to assess (1) how reviewers of new Cochrane intervention reviews report on procedures and outcomes of contacting of authors of primary studies to obtain additional data, (2) how authors reply, and (3) the consequences of these additional data on the outcomes and quality scores in the review. All research questions and methods were pilot tested on 2 months of Cochrane reviews and were subsequently fine-tuned.Methods for the cross-sectional studyEligibility criteria are (1) all new (not-updates) Cochrane intervention reviews published in 2016, (2) reviews that included one or more primary studies, and (3) eligible interventions refer to contacting of authors of the eligible primary studies included in the review to obtain additional research data (e.g., information on unreported or missing data, individual patient data, research methods, and bias issues). Searching for eligible reviews and data extraction will be conducted by two authors independently. The cross-sectional study will primarily focus on how contacting of authors is conducted and reported, how contacted authors reply, and how reviewers report on obtained additional data and their consequences for the review.Methods for the surveyThe same eligible reviews for the cross-sectional study will also be eligible for the survey. Surveys will be sent to the contact addresses of these reviews according to a pre-defined protocol. We will use Google Forms as our survey platform. Surveyees are asked to answer eight questions. The survey will primarily focus on the consequences of contacting authors of eligible primary studies for the risk of bias and Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation scores and the primary and secondary outcomes of the review.DiscussionThe findings of this study could help improve methods of contacting authors and reporting of these procedures and their outcomes. Patients, clinicians, researchers, guideline developers, research sponsors, and the general public will all be beneficiaries.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13643-017-0643-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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The Cochrane Collaboration at 20

Cited by 17 publications

References 7 publications

Automating Biomedical Evidence Synthesis: RobotReviewer

Automating Biomedical Evidence Synthesis: RobotReviewer

The role of pragmatism in explaining heterogeneity in meta-analyses of randomised trials: a protocol for a cross-sectional methodological review

Contacting of authors by systematic reviewers: protocol for a cross-sectional study and a survey

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