ArticleJournal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA2021
The NICE OECD countries' geographic search filters: Part 2-validation of the MEDLINE and Embase (Ovid) filters.
Article in Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Enhancing the design, conduct and evaluation of public health emergency preparedness exercises: a rapid review.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- Development and validation of a geographic search filter for PubMed for retrieving studies about Nordic countries.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2026Article
- Removing records on animals and nonhumans in Ovid Embase: a comparison of 11 filters.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2026Article
- Article
- Translation and validation of a geographic search filter to identify studies about Germany in Embase (Ovid) and MEDLINE(R) ALL (Ovid).Research synthesis methods · 2025Article
- Use and application of geographical restrictions in systematic reviews with the aim of including studies about Germany: An update of a methodological review.Health information and libraries journal · 2024Review
- Searching for the social determinants of health: observations from evidence synthesis publications.Systematic reviews · 2024Article
- The ScHARR LMIC filter: Adapting a low- and middle-income countries geographic search filter to identify studies on preterm birth prevention and management.Research synthesis methods · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveWe previously developed draft MEDLINE and Embase (Ovid) geographic search filters for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to assess their feasibility for finding evidence about the countries. Here, we describe the validation of these search filters.
methodsWe identified OECD country references from thirty National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines to generate gold standard sets for MEDLINE (n=2,065) and Embase (n=2,023). We validated the filters by calculating their recall against these sets. We then applied the filters to existing search strategies for three OECD-focused NICE guideline reviews (NG103 on flu vaccination, NG140 on abortion care, and NG146 on workplace health) to calculate the filters' impact on the number needed to read (NNR) of the searches.
resultsThe filters both achieved 99.95% recall against the gold standard sets. Both filters achieved 100% recall for the three NICE guideline reviews. The MEDLINE filter reduced NNR from 256 to 232 for the NG103 review, from 38 to 27 for the NG140 review, and from 631 to 591 for the NG146 review. The Embase filter reduced NNR from 373 to 341 for the NG103 review, from 101 to 76 for the NG140 review, and from 989 to 925 for the NG146 review.
conclusionThe NICE OECD countries' search filters are the first validated filters for the countries. They can save time for research topics about OECD countries by finding the majority of evidence about OECD countries while reducing search result volumes in comparison to no filter use.
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