Outcomes and level of evidence in radiation therapy research and different categories of radiotherapy innovations: an ESTRO-VBRO bibliometrics analysis of the literature
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AIM: The ESTRO-Value-Based Radiation Oncology project aims to enhance patient access to high-value radiotherapy innovations, by identifying interventions delivering meaningful benefit. To understand the role of the quality of evidence in implementation decisions, this paper analyses the study designs and endpoints used to appraise selected types of radiotherapy innovations in the literature. METHODS: This review used a quantitative bibliometric approach to analyse a representative set of 23 radiotherapy innovations, identified within the radiation therapy research published between 2012 and 2022 in the Web of Science database. Abstracts were searched manually to extract information about study designs and endpoints. Interventions were allocated into one of four defined radiotherapy categories, based on a decision algorithm developed in a parallel project. RESULTS: 3,721 abstracts were identified and categorised using the decision algorithm into four categories: Drug-centred, Radiation-centred, Radiation-enabling or Operational radiotherapy interventions. The study designs were highly variable across these categories: in Drug-centred innovations, 20.3% were clinical trials compared to 6.8% for Radiation-centred. The predominant design across all categories was Prospective observational studies, ranging from 53.9% in Radiation-enabling to 23.0% in Drug-centred innovations. Regarding endpoints, the main focus for Drug-centred innovations was on Clinical endpoints and Overall survival. For Radiation-centred and Radiation-enabling innovations, Toxicity endpoints were more frequently reported. CONCLUSION: This analysis demonstrates the differences in radiotherapy research output for various categories of radiotherapy interventions. This supports the development of a tailored appraisal strategy for each category, based on the required level of evidence and meaningful endpoints to support reimbursement and clinical implementation.
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 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 | 0.093 | 0.432 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.269 | 0.245 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
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; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
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".