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Record W4411299315 · doi:10.1093/fampra/cmaf037

Getting started with search filters in primary care literature reviews

2025· article· en· W4411299315 on OpenAlexaff
Thomas Morel, Vera Granikov, Ambar Kulshreshtha, Richard A. Young, Jean‐Pascal Fournier

Bibliographic record

VenueFamily Practice · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldHealth Professions
TopicHealth Sciences Research and Education
Canadian institutionsCentre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal
Fundersnot available
KeywordsTerminologyRelevance (law)MedicinePrimary careVocabularyMEDLINEInformation retrievalComputer scienceFamily medicine

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Primary care researchers and clinicians are facing an ever-growing evidence base, more options to access research evidence, and increasingly limited time. Incorporating search filters into primary care systematic reviews can significantly improve the efficiency and confidence of the search process. Search filters, or hedges, are predeveloped search strategies that combine controlled vocabulary and free text terms using Boolean operators (words like "AND," "OR"). Search filters help to manage the diverse terminology in the literature, such as the various synonyms for primary care, and can be tailored to the specific needs of the review, whether it aims to be exhaustive or more focussed. Resources such as specialized librarians, databases such as PubMed, and repositories such as the InterTASC Information Specialists Sub-Group provide access to these valuable tools. However, as primary care terminology continues to evolve, regular updates to these filters are necessary to maintain their relevance and effectiveness. This method brief presents search filters and highlights their value for finding research literature in primary care.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.538
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.765
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.462
Threshold uncertainty score0.570

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.5380.765
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0040.006
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0120.009
Bibliometrics0.0540.037
Science and technology studies0.0050.006
Scholarly communication0.0160.026
Open science0.0070.012
Research integrity0.0110.007
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0210.007

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.

Opus teacher head0.118
GPT teacher head0.508
Teacher spread0.390 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.

Study designNot applicable
DomainMethods
GenreMethods

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".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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