Comparison of information processing technologies.

objectiveTo examine the type of information obtainable from scientific papers, using three different methods for the extraction, organization, and preparation of literature reviews.

designA set of three review papers was identified, and the ideas represented by the authors of those papers were extracted. The 161 articles referenced in those three reviews were then analyzed using 1) a formalized data extraction approach, which uses a protocol-driven manual process to extract the variables, values, and statistical significance of the stated relationships; and 2) a computerized approach known as "Idea Analysis," which uses the abstracts of the original articles and processes them through a computer software program that reads the abstracts and organizes the ideas presented by the authors. The results were then compared. The literature focused on the human papillomavirus and its relationship to cervical cancer.

resultsIdea Analysis was able to identify 68.9 percent of the ideas considered by the authors of the three review papers to be of importance in describing the association between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer. The formalized data extraction identified 27 percent of the authors' ideas. The combination of the two approaches identified 74.3 percent of the ideas considered important in the relationship between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer, as reported by the authors of the three review articles.

conclusionThis research demonstrated that both a technically derived and a computer derived collection, categorization, and summarization of original articles and abstracts could provide a reliable, valid, and reproducible source of ideas duplicating, to a major degree, the ideas presented by subject specialists in review articles. As such, these tools may be useful to experts preparing literature reviews by eliminating many of the clerical-mechanical features associated with present-day scientific text processing.