ArticleBMC biology2023
The Automated Systematic Search Deduplicator (ASySD): a rapid, open-source, interoperable tool to remove duplicate citations in biomedical systematic reviews.
Article in BMC biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 14 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
50 citing papers in PubMed, 14 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effect of adding a second multimodal analgesic component to anesthesia regimens on acute postoperative pain outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC anesthesiology · 2026Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Structural and health system determinants of mental health in Tanzania: mapping policy recommendations to the WHO comprehensive mental health action plan 2013-2030.Frontiers in public health · 2026Pooled it
- Pharmacological antiemetic prophylaxis and treatment for opioid-induced nausea and vomiting (OINV) in patients treated for cancer pain and cancer-related breathlessness.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Bioimpedance Measurement for Monitoring Chronic Wounds: A Systematic Review.International wound journal · 2025Pooled it
- Efficacy of cannabidiol alone or in combination with Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol for the management of substance use disorders: An umbrella review of the evidence.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Effectiveness of Open Incision Negative Pressure Wound Therapy for Surgical Site Infection Prevention for Abdominal Surgery-A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International wound journal · 2025Pooled it
- Building a synthesis-ready research ecosystem: fostering collaboration and open science to accelerate biomedical translation.BMC medical research methodology · 2025Pooled it
- The influence of disparities on intensive care outcomes in children with respiratory diseases: A systematic review.Pediatric pulmonology · 2024Pooled it
- Risk factors for adverse health in military and law enforcement personnel; an umbrella review.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Systematic online living evidence summaries: emerging tools to accelerate evidence synthesis.Clinical science (London, England : 1979) · 2023Pooled it
- Screening for in vitro systematic reviews: a comparison of screening methods and training of a machine learning classifier.Clinical science (London, England : 1979) · 2023Pooled it
- Functional Neural Architecture of Working Memory in Musicians: An ALE Meta-Analysis and Review.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive sciencePooled it
- Methods and evidence in economic evaluations of modern radiotherapy: a systematic mapping review protocol.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Therapists' time allocation in guided digital mental health interventions - A scoping review and case study.Internet interventions · 2026Review
- Article
- Cerebrovascular reactivity delay measured by blood oxygen level dependent magnetic resonance imaging and gas challenges: A systematic review.Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism · 2026Review
- Enhancing Transparency, Auditability, and Reproducibility of Deduplication in Systematic Reviews: Tutorial for the Rayyan Method and Systematic Auto Resolver.Interactive journal of medical research · 2026Article
- Randomized Clinical Trials Using a Hierarchical Composite Primary End Point: A Scoping Review.JAMA network open · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundResearchers performing high-quality systematic reviews search across multiple databases to identify relevant evidence. However, the same publication is often retrieved from several databases. Identifying and removing such duplicates ("deduplication") can be extremely time-consuming, but failure to remove these citations can lead to the wrongful inclusion of duplicate data. Many existing tools are not sensitive enough, lack interoperability with other tools, are not freely accessible, or are difficult to use without programming knowledge. Here, we report the performance of our Automated Systematic Search Deduplicator (ASySD), a novel tool to perform automated deduplication of systematic searches for biomedical reviews.
methodsWe evaluated ASySD's performance on 5 unseen biomedical systematic search datasets of various sizes (1845-79,880 citations). We compared the performance of ASySD with EndNote's automated deduplication option and with the Systematic Review Assistant Deduplication Module (SRA-DM).
resultsASySD identified more duplicates than either SRA-DM or EndNote, with a sensitivity in different datasets of 0.95 to 0.99. The false-positive rate was comparable to human performance, with a specificity of > 0.99. The tool took less than 1 h to identify and remove duplicates within each dataset.
conclusionsFor duplicate removal in biomedical systematic reviews, ASySD is a highly sensitive, reliable, and time-saving tool. It is open source and freely available online as both an R package and a user-friendly web application.
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.