Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39095913›Full record

ArticleSystematic reviews2024

Automation of duplicate record detection for systematic reviews: Deduplicator.

Connor Forbes, Hannah Greenwood, Matt Carter, Justin Clark

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Systematic reviews, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers, 24 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
60citing 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

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

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  3. Systematic Review of Growth in Young Children With Cleft Lip and/or Cleft Palate From 0 to 24 Months of Age.The Cleft palate-craniofacial journal : official publication of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association · 2026
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  16. The effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation in motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease: an overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025
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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

4 authors.

Connor ForbesInstitute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. cforbes@bond.edu.au.ORCID 0000-0003-0144-4933
Hannah GreenwoodInstitute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.
Matt CarterInstitute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.
Justin ClarkInstitute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundTo describe the algorithm and investigate the efficacy of a novel systematic review automation tool "the Deduplicator" to remove duplicate records from a multi-database systematic review search.

methodsWe constructed and tested the efficacy of the Deduplicator tool by using 10 previous Cochrane systematic review search results to compare the Deduplicator's 'balanced' algorithm to a semi-manual EndNote method. Two researchers each performed deduplication on the 10 libraries of search results. For five of those libraries, one researcher used the Deduplicator, while the other performed semi-manual deduplication with EndNote. They then switched methods for the remaining five libraries. In addition to this analysis, comparison between the three different Deduplicator algorithms ('balanced', 'focused' and 'relaxed') was performed on two datasets of previously deduplicated search results.

resultsBefore deduplication, the mean library size for the 10 systematic reviews was 1962 records. When using the Deduplicator, the mean time to deduplicate was 5 min per 1000 records compared to 15 min with EndNote. The mean error rate with Deduplicator was 1.8 errors per 1000 records in comparison to 3.1 with EndNote. Evaluation of the different Deduplicator algorithms found that the 'balanced' algorithm had the highest mean F1 score of 0.9647. The 'focused' algorithm had the highest mean accuracy of 0.9798 and the highest recall of 0.9757. The 'relaxed' algorithm had the highest mean precision of 0.9896.

conclusionsThis demonstrates that using the Deduplicator for duplicate record detection reduces the time taken to deduplicate, while maintaining or improving accuracy compared to using a semi-manual EndNote method. However, further research should be performed comparing more deduplication methods to establish relative performance of the Deduplicator against other deduplication methods.

Indexed as

AlgorithmsSystematic Reviews as TopicAutomationInformation Storage and RetrievalAutomaticDeduplicationDuplicate articleDuplicate recordSearchingSystematic review

Identifiers

PMID39095913
PMCPMC11295717

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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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.