Database combinations to retrieve systematic reviews in Overviews of reviews: A methodological study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background When conducting an Overviews of Reviews on health-related topics it is unclear which combination of bibliographic databases authors should use for searching for systematic reviews. Our goal was to determine which databases indexed the most systematic reviews and identify an optimal database combination for searching systematic reviews. Methods A set of 86 Overviews of Reviews with 1219 included systematic reviews was extracted from a previous study. Indexing of the systematic reviews was assessed in MEDLINE, CINAHL, DARE, Embase, Epistemonikos, PsycINFO, and TRIP. The mean indexing rate (% of indexed systematic reviews) and corresponding 95% confidence interval were calculated for each database individually, as well as for combinations of MEDLINE with other databases and reference checking. Results Indexing of systematic reviews was higher in MEDLINE than in any other single database (mean indexing rate 89.7%; 95% confidence interval [89.0–90.3%]). Combined with reference checking, this value increased to 93.7% [93.2–94.2%]. The best combination of two databases plus reference checking consisted of MEDLINE and Epistemonikos (99.2% [99.0–99.3%]). Stratification by Health Technology Assessment reports (97.7% [96.5–98.9%]) vs. Cochrane overviews (100.0%) vs. non-Cochrane overviews (99.3% [99.1–99.4%]) showed that indexing was only slightly lower for Health Technology Assessment reports. However, MEDLINE, Epistemonikos, and reference checking remained the best combination. Among the 10/1219 systematic reviews not identified by this combination, five were published as websites rather than journals, two were indexed in CINAHL and Embase, and one was indexed in the database ERIC. Conclusions MEDLINE/Epistemonikos, complemented by reference checking, is the best database combination to identify systematic reviews on health-related topics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | Metaresearch Domain: Methods · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Simulation or modeling | low |
| gpt | Metaresearch Domain: Methods · Genre: Methods About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Other design | medium |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.306 | 0.661 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.024 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.058 | 0.074 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".