ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2014
Automatic evidence retrieval for systematic reviews.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Absence of Evidence of Beneficial Effects of Human Milk-Based Fortifier: A Bayesian Model-Averaged Meta-Analysis.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2025Pooled it
- Effectiveness of work ability interventions on productivity: a systematic review.Journal of occupational health · 2025Pooled it
- Challenges in developing methods for quantifying the effects of weather and climate on water-associated diseases: A systematic review.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2017Pooled it
- Automating data extraction in systematic reviews: a systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2015Pooled it
- Endoluminal anatomy in retrograde ureteroscopy: surgical landmarks and clinical implications.World journal of urology · 2026Review
- Multimodal Intelligent Monitoring of Parkinson Disease: Scoping Review of Progress and Translational Challenges.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Large language models in systematic review and meta-analysis of surgical treatments for vaginal vault prolapse.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- The Health and Physical Education Curriculum: Does It Address Muscular Fitness?Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2026Article
- Cardiovascular responses during blood flow-restricted resistance exercise: a systematic review with meta-analysis.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2026Article
- Single-Stage Versus 2-Stage Facial Reanimation With a Free Functional Muscle Flap: Protocol for a Systematic Review.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Comparison of Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Systems and Conventional Non-Pressure Dressings on Surgical Site Infection Rate After Stoma Reversal: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- Determinants of Health and Performance in Wildland Firefighters: A Narrative Review.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Review
- Neither Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate nor Platelet-Rich Plasma Improves Patient-Reported Outcomes After Surgical Management of Acetabular Labral Tears; However, Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate May Be Effective for Moderate Cartilage Damage: A Systematic Review.Arthroscopy, sports medicine, and rehabilitation · 2024Review
- A scoping review evaluating physical and cognitive functional outcomes in cancer survivors treated with chemotherapy: charting progress since the 2018 NCI think tank on cancer and aging phenotypes.Journal of cancer survivorship : research and practice · 2024Article
- Multicomponent processes to identify and prioritise low-value care in hospital settings: a scoping review.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Clinical Applications and Mechanical Properties of CAD-CAM Materials in Restorative and Prosthetic Dentistry: A Systematic Review.Journal of functional biomaterials · 2023Review
- Development of a conceptual framework for reporting modifications in surgical innovation: scoping review.BJS open · 2023Article
- Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: Information Literacy.International journal of endocrinology and metabolism · 2022Review
- Personalized and Self-Management: Systematic Search and Evaluation Quality Factors and User Preference of Drug Reference Apps in Taiwan.Journal of personalized medicine · 2021Article
- Publications search optimization: Comparison of a homegrown-API approach versus manual publication searches at an NCI designated cancer center.Health informatics journal · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSnowballing involves recursively pursuing relevant references cited in the retrieved literature and adding them to the search results. Snowballing is an alternative approach to discover additional evidence that was not retrieved through conventional search. Snowballing's effectiveness makes it best practice in systematic reviews despite being time-consuming and tedious.
objectiveOur goal was to evaluate an automatic method for citation snowballing's capacity to identify and retrieve the full text and/or abstracts of cited articles.
methodsUsing 20 review articles that contained 949 citations to journal or conference articles, we manually searched Microsoft Academic Search (MAS) and identified 78.0% (740/949) of the cited articles that were present in the database. We compared the performance of the automatic citation snowballing method against the results of this manual search, measuring precision, recall, and F1 score.
resultsThe automatic method was able to correctly identify 633 (as proportion of included citations: recall=66.7%, F1 score=79.3%; as proportion of citations in MAS: recall=85.5%, F1 score=91.2%) of citations with high precision (97.7%), and retrieved the full text or abstract for 490 (recall=82.9%, precision=92.1%, F1 score=87.3%) of the 633 correctly retrieved citations.
conclusionsThe proposed method for automatic citation snowballing is accurate and is capable of obtaining the full texts or abstracts for a substantial proportion of the scholarly citations in review articles. By automating the process of citation snowballing, it may be possible to reduce the time and effort of common evidence surveillance tasks such as keeping trial registries up to date and conducting systematic reviews.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.