Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31019390›Full record

ArticleJournal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA2019

Errors in search strategies used in systematic reviews and their effects on information retrieval.

José Antonio Salvador-Oliván, Gonzalo Marco-Cuenca, Rosario Arquero-Avilés

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers, 18 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
71citing papers in PubMed, 18 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

71 citing papers in PubMed, 18 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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  6. Postbiotics and Dental Caries: A Systematic Review.Clinical and experimental dental research · 2025
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  13. Association between Noise Annoyance and Mental Health Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022
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11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

José Antonio Salvador-OlivánProfessor, Department of Library and Information Science and Faculty of Medicine, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, jaso@unizar.es.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8568-3098
Gonzalo Marco-CuencaProfessor, Department of Library and Information Science and Faculty of Medicine, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, gmarco@unizar.es.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7149-6192
Rosario Arquero-AvilésProfessor, Department of Library and Information Science, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, carquero@ucm.es.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3097-8734

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectivesErrors in search strategies negatively affect the quality and validity of systematic reviews. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate searches performed in MEDLINE/PubMed to identify errors and determine their effects on information retrieval.

methodsA PubMed search was conducted using the systematic review filter to identify articles that were published in January of 2018. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses were selected from a systematic search for literature containing reproducible and explicit search strategies in MEDLINE/PubMed. Data were extracted from these studies related to ten types of errors and to the terms and phrases search modes.

resultsThe study included 137 systematic reviews in which the number of search strategies containing some type of error was very high (92.7%). Errors that affected recall were the most frequent (78.1%), and the most common search errors involved missing terms in both natural language and controlled language and those related to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) search terms and the non-retrieval of their more specific terms.

conclusionsTo improve the quality of searches and avoid errors, it is essential to plan the search strategy carefully, which includes consulting the MeSH database to identify the concepts and choose all appropriate terms, both descriptors and synonyms, and combining search techniques in the free-text and controlled-language fields, truncating the terms appropriately to retrieve all their variants.

Indexed as

Review Literature as TopicScientific Experimental ErrorHumansInformation Storage and RetrievalMedical Subject HeadingsNatural Language Processing

Identifiers

PMID31019390
PMCPMC6466507

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

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.