Improving peer review of systematic reviews and related review types by involving librarians and information specialists as methodological peer reviewers: a randomised controlled trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of adding librarians and information specialists (LIS) as methodological peer reviewers to the formal journal peer review process on the quality of search reporting and risk of bias in systematic review searches in the medical literature. DESIGN: Pragmatic two-group parallel randomised controlled trial. SETTING: Three biomedical journals. PARTICIPANTS: ). 76 manuscripts were revised and resubmitted in the intervention group and 90 in the control group by 2 January 2024. INTERVENTIONS: All manuscripts followed usual journal practice for peer review, but those in the intervention group had an additional (LIS) peer reviewer invited. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcomes are the differences in first revision manuscripts between intervention and control groups in the quality of reporting and risk of bias. Quality of reporting was measured using four prespecified PRISMA-S items. Risk of bias was measured using ROBIS Domain 2. Assessments were done in duplicate and assessors were blinded to group allocation. Secondary outcomes included differences between groups for each individual PRISMA-S and ROBIS Domain 2 item. The difference in the proportion of manuscripts rejected as the first decision post-peer review between the intervention and control groups was an additional outcome. RESULTS: Differences in the proportion of adequately reported searches (4.4% difference, 95% CI: -2.0% to 10.7%) and risk of bias in searches (0.5% difference, 95% CI: -13.7% to 14.6%) showed no statistically significant differences between groups. By 4 months post-study, 98 intervention and 70 control group manuscripts had been rejected after peer review (13.8% difference, 95% CI: 3.9% to 23.8%). CONCLUSIONS: Inviting LIS peer reviewers did not impact adequate reporting or risk of bias of searches in first revision manuscripts of biomedical systematic reviews and related review types, though LIS peer reviewers may have contributed to a higher rate of rejection after peer review. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/W4CK2.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
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 | 0.294 | 0.519 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.018 | 0.014 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.016 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.015 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.022 | 0.004 |
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, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
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".