Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33144936›Full record

ArticleEcology and evolution2020

A contrast of meta and metafor packages for meta-analyses in R.

Christopher J Lortie, Alex Filazzola

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Ecology and evolution, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 24 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
43citing papers in PubMed, 24 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

43 citing papers in PubMed, 24 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Maternal diabetes as a prenatal risk factor for multiple sclerosis in offspring: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Christopher J LortieDepartment of Biology York University Toronto ON Canada.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4291-7023
Alex FilazzolaBiological Sciences University of Alberta Edmonton AB Canada.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6544-2035

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

There is extensive choice in R to support meta-analyses.Two packages in this ecosystem include meta and metafor and provide an excellent opportunity to apply a structured checklist previously developed for contrasts between R packages relevant to challenges in ecology and evolution.Meta is a direct, intuitive choice for rapid implementation of general meta-analytical statistics. Metafor is a comprehensive package best suited for relatively more complex models.Both packages provide estimates of heterogeneity, excellent visualization tools, and functions to explore publication bias.The package metafor has a steeper learning curve but greater rewards. Reference to the learning curve and capacities of the statistical software Stata provided a benchmark outside the R ecosystem and confirmed the consistency in statistics.The usefulness of meta-analyses is not just in the synthesis of the research but in the process of doing the scientific synthesis. Reporting of contrasts and checks for robust statistics is an important contribution to more transparent and reproducible scientific syntheses.

Indexed as

computational toolscontrastsmetameta‐analysesmetaformethodsRreview

Identifiers

PMID33144936
PMCPMC7593135

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

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.