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Systematic reviews of quasi-experimental studies: challenges and considerations

2025· article· en· W7117368100 on OpenAlexafffund
Sarah B. Windle, S. Harper, Jasleen Arneja, Peter Socha, Arijit Nandi

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Clinical Epidemiology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicMeta-analysis and systematic reviews
Canadian institutionsMcGill University Health CentreMcGill University
FundersFonds de Recherche du Québec - SantéNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaCanadian Institutes of Health Research
KeywordsSystematic reviewPreprintConsistency (knowledge bases)Variety (cybernetics)Transparency (behavior)Grey literatureMEDLINEProtocol (science)Identification (biology)Comparability

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex
No abstract in any covered source. Its absence is recorded, not treated as a negative.

No abstract. This is not a gap in this database; OpenAlex has none either. 23.3% of the frame is in this state, and the screen finds HALF as much metaresearch here, so the absence is a measured bias rather than a missing field.

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 armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmaMetaresearch
Domain: Methods · Genre: Empirical
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Theoretical or conceptualhigh
gptMetaresearchMeta-epidemiology (broad)
Domain: Methods · Genre: Methods
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Systematic reviewhigh
models splitAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.665
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.923
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Meta-epidemiology (broad)
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.807
Threshold uncertainty score0.986

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.6650.923
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0280.004
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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 head0.966
GPT teacher head0.734
Teacher spread0.232 · 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

Labeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.

MetaresearchMeta-epidemiology (broad)

The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual · Systematic review
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical · Methods

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

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractno

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