Research Synthesis Methods

Article	Citations
Reported methodological quality of medical systematic reviews: Development of an assessment tool (ReMarQ) and meta-research study	283
An investigation of the impact of using contrast- and arm-synthesis models for network meta-analysis	241
Facilitating open science practices for research syntheses: PreregRS guides preregistration	147
Accuracy of conversion formula for effect sizes: A Monte Carlo simulation	115
A mapping exercise using automated techniques to develop a search strategy to identify systematic review tools	113
Towards the automatic risk of bias assessment on randomized controlled trials: A comparison of RobotReviewer and humans	90
Including non‐English language articles in systematic reviews: A reflection on processes for identifying low‐cost sources of translation support	68
The age of abundant scholarly information and its synthesis– A time when ‘just google it’ is no longer enough	68
Meta‐analyses of partial correlations are biased: Detection and solutions	56
Assessment of key characteristics, methodology, and effect size measures used in meta‐analysis of human‐health‐related animal studies	56
What are the best methods for rapid reviews of the research evidence? A systematic review of reviews and primary studies	55
Advice for improving the reproducibility of data extraction in meta‐analysis	49
Issue Information	47
	40
	39
Synthesis of depression outcomes reported on different scales: A comparison of methods for modelling mean differences	35
CausalMetaR: An R package for performing causally interpretable meta-analyses	31
Bias propagation in network meta‐analysis models	30
Fast‐and‐frugal decision tree for the rapid critical appraisal of systematic reviews	30
Bayesian meta‐analysis usingSAS PROC BGLIMM	27
Retrieving Cochrane reviews is sometimes challenging and their reporting is not always optimal	26
Capturing causal claims: A fine-tuned text mining model for extracting causal sentences from social science papers	24
Correct standard errors can bias meta‐analysis	23
Methods for population adjustment with limited access to individual patient data: A review and simulation study	23
Reporting of Cochrane systematic review protocols with network meta‐analyses—A scoping review	22

Network meta analysis to predict the efficacy of an approved treatment in a new indication	22
A comprehensive systematic review dataset is a rich resource for training and evaluation of AI systems for title and abstract screening	22
Data extraction for evidence synthesis using a large language model: A proof‐of‐concept study	22
Cumulative meta‐analysis: What works	20
Calculating the power of a planned individual participant data meta‐analysis to examine prognostic factor effects for a binary outcome	20
Selecting a specialized education database for literature reviews and evidence synthesis projects	20
How to plan and manage an individual participant data meta‐analysis. An illustrative toolkit	19
Regarding approaches to simulating random‐effects	19
Issue Information	18
Sensitivity analysis for reporting bias on the time-dependent summary receiver operating characteristics curve in meta-analysis of prognosis studies with time-to-event outcomes	18
Graphical tools for visualizing the results of network meta‐analysis of multicomponent interventions	17
Issue Information	17
Validation of large language models (Llama 3 and ChatGPT-4o mini) for title and abstract screening in biomedical systematic reviews	17
Bayesian Federated Inference for regression models based on non-shared medical center data	17
	17
Impact of trial attrition rates on treatment effect estimates in chronic inflammatory diseases: A meta‐epidemiological study	16
Inclusive critical appraisal of qualitative and quantitative findings in evidence synthesis	16
Six ways to handle dependent effect sizes in meta-analytic structural equation modeling: Is there a gold standard?	16
Parametric G‐computation for compatible indirect treatment comparisons with limited individual patient data	15
Evaluation of statistical methods used to meta‐analyse results from interrupted time series studies: A simulation study	15
Population adjusted‐indirect comparisons in health technology assessment: A methodological systematic review	15
Missingness mechanism messiness in meta‐analysis: A response to “The importance of plausible data‐generating mechanisms in simulation studies”	15
Twenty years of network meta‐analysis: Continuing controversies and recent developments	15
Double arcsine transform not appropriate for meta‐analysis	15
Bibliometric study of ‘overviews of systematic reviews’ of health interventions: Evaluation of prevalence, citation and journal impact factor	15
Critical appraisal tools used in systematic reviews of in vitro cell culture studies: A methodological study	15
Using qualitative comparative analysis as a mixed methods synthesis in systematic mixed studies reviews: Guidance and a worked example	15
A practical guide to evaluating sensitivity of literature search strings for systematic reviews using relative recall	14
A semiparametric approach for meta‐analysis of diagnostic accuracy studies with multiple cut‐offs	14
Enhanced access to recommendations from the Cochrane Handbook for improving authors' judgments about risk of bias: A randomized controlled trial	14
Causally interpretable meta‐analysis: Clearly defined causal effects and two case studies	14
Issue Information	13
	13
	13
RIMeta: An R shiny tool for estimating the reference interval from a meta‐analysis	13
Issue Information	13
A re‐analysis of about 60,000 sparse data meta‐analyses suggests that using an adequate method for pooling matters	12
Development of a search filter to retrieve reports of interrupted time series studies from MEDLINE and PubMed	12
Pitfalls in choosing data examples for methodological work: Bayesian approaches to a fixed effects meta‐analysis of zinc lozenges for the common cold	12
Response to Gusenbauer M, Haddaway NR “What every researcher should know about searching – Clarified concepts, search advice, and an agenda to improve finding in academia”	11
Appropriateness of conducting and reporting random‐effects meta‐analysis in oncology	11
Reduce, reuse, recycle: Introducing MetaPipeX, a framework for analyses of multi‐lab data	11
Crowdsourcing the identification of studies for COVID‐19‐related Cochrane Rapid Reviews	11
	10
Accuracy and precision of fixed and random effects in meta‐analyses of randomized control trials for continuous outcomes	10
Commercial funding and estimated intervention effects in randomized clinical trials: Systematic review of meta‐epidemiological studies	10
Combining meta‐analysis with multiple imputation for one‐step, privacy‐protecting estimation of causal treatment effects in multi‐site studies	10
Using systems perspectives in evidence synthesis: A methodological mapping review	10
Issue Information	10
Rare events meta‐analysis using the Bayesian beta‐binomial model	10

An evaluation of the performance of stopping rules in AI‐aided screening for psychological meta‐analytical research	10
Methodological considerations for novel approaches to covariate‐adjusted indirect treatment comparisons	9
Network meta‐analysis: Looping back	9
Rapid evidence synthesis approach for limits on the search date: How rapid could it be?	9
	9
How should we handle predatory journals in evidence synthesis? A descriptive survey‐based cross‐sectional study of evidence synthesis experts	9
Meta‐analyses of phase I dose‐finding studies: Application for the development of protein kinase inhibitors in oncology	9
Exploring methodological approaches used in network meta‐analysis of psychological interventions: A scoping review	8
Methods for using Bing's AI‐powered search engine for data extraction for a systematic review	8
Estimating interactions and subgroup‐specific treatment effects in meta‐analysis without aggregation bias: A within‐trial framework	8
A novel robust meta-analysis model using the t distribution for outlier accommodation and detection	8
Reverse‐Bayes methods for evidence assessment and research synthesis	8
Searchsmart.org: Guiding researchers to the best databases and search systems for systematic reviews and beyond	8
Graphical Representation of Overlap for OVErviews: GROOVE tool	8
Adjusting for misclassification of an exposure in an individual participant data meta‐analysis	8
	8
	8
Treatment recommendations based on network meta-analysis: Rules for risk-averse decision-makers	7
Meta‐regression methods to characterize evidence strength using meaningful‐effect percentages conditional on study characteristics	7
A critical reflection on computing the sampling variance of the partial correlation coefficient	7
Exact inference for fixed‐effects meta‐analysis of proportions	7
Network meta-analysis made simple: A composite likelihood approach	7
Response to: Briscoe “Exploring the relevance of the effect of geographical location when searching for studies using Google Search”	7
Meta‐analytic structural equation modeling made easy: A tutorial and web application for one‐stageMASEM	7
Sample size calculation for clinical trials analyzed with the meta‐analytic‐predictive approach	7
Consensus on the definition and assessment of external validity of randomized controlled trials: A Delphi study	7
Machine learning for identifying randomised controlled trials when conducting systematic reviews: Development and evaluation of its impact on practice	7
Identifying evidence for five realist reviews in primary health care: A comparison of search methods	6
On the bias of complete‐ and shifting‐case meta‐regressions with missing covariates	6
Robust variance estimation in small meta‐analysis with the standardized mean difference	6
Issue Information	6
metamedian: An R package for meta‐analyzing studies reporting medians	6
Subsequent full publication of qualitative studies presented at United Kingdom Royal College of Nursing Research Conference 2015 and 2016: A follow‐up study	6
Development and validation of a geographic search filter for MEDLINE (PubMed) to identify studies about Germany	6
ccaR: A package for assessing primary study overlap across systematic reviews in overviews	6
Meta‐analysis of dichotomous and ordinal tests with an imperfect gold standard	6
Scoping review search practices in the social sciences: A scoping review	6
When conducting a systematic review, can one trade search efficiency for potential publication bias?	6
A tutorial on aggregating evidence from conceptual replication studies using the product Bayes factor	5
Improved methods to construct prediction intervals for network meta‐analysis	5
Citationchaser: A tool for transparent and efficient forward and backward citation chasing in systematic searching	5
Advancing unanchored simulated treatment comparisons: A novel implementation and simulation study	5
Issue Information	5
On ratio measures of heterogeneity for meta‐analyses	5
Footprint of publication selection bias on meta‐analyses in medicine, environmental sciences, psychology, and economics	5
	5
Correction to “Network Meta‐Interpolation: Effect modification adjustment in network meta‐analysis using subgroup analyses”	5
The importance of plausible data‐generating mechanisms in simulation studies: A response to ‘Comparing methods for handling missing covariates in meta‐regression’ by Lee and Beretvas (doi: 10.1002/jrs	4
Assessment of temporal instability in the applied ecology and conservation evidence base	4
‘Twenty years of network meta‐analysis: Continuing controversies and recent developments’: A health technology assessment perspective	4
Combining estimators in interlaboratory studies and meta‐analyses	4
Two decades of network meta‐analysis: Roadmap to their applications and challenges	4
Calculating the power of a planned individual participant data meta‐analysis of randomised trials to examine a treatment‐covariate interaction with a time‐to‐event outcome	4
Visualization toolkits for enriching meta-analyses through evidence maps, bibliometrics, and alternative impact metrics	4
Making the case for librarian expertise to support evidence synthesis for the sustainable development goals	4
Evolving use of the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 tool in biomedical systematic reviews	4
Issue Information	4
Evaluation of the interim Cochrane rapid review methods guidance—A mixed‐methods study on the understanding of and adherence to the guidance	4
Avoiding common mistakes in meta‐analysis: Understanding the distinct roles of Q, I‐squared, tau‐squared, and the prediction interval in reporting heterogeneity	4
	3
Developing prediction models when there are systematically missing predictors in individual patient data meta‐analysis	3
In‐depth evaluation of machine learning methods for semi‐automating article screening in a systematic review of mechanistic literature	3
Uncertain about uncertainty in matching‐adjusted indirect comparisons? A simulation study to compare methods for variance estimation	3
	3
Comparing methods for handling missing covariates in meta‐regression	3
A comparison of two models for detecting inconsistency in network meta‐analysis	3
The use of fixed study main effects in arm‐based network meta‐analysis	3
	3
Synthesizing evidence from the earliest studies to support decision‐making: To what extent could the evidence be reliable?	3
Paperfetcher: A tool to automate handsearching and citation searching for systematic reviews	3
metaConvert: an automatic suite for estimation of 11 different effect size measures and flexible conversion across them	3
Estimation of heterogeneity variance based on a generalized Q statistic in meta‐analysis of log‐odds‐ratio	3
A comprehensive review and shiny application on the matching‐adjusted indirect comparison	3
A framework to characterise the reproducibility of meta‐analysis results with its application to direct oral anticoagulants in the acute treatment of venous thromboembolism	3
Risk of bias assessment in preclinical literature using natural language processing	3
Investigation of bias due to selective inclusion of study effect estimates in meta‐analyses of nutrition research	3
Bayesian random‐effects meta‐analysis with empirical heterogeneity priors for application in health technology assessment with very few studies	3
Translating systematic searches in the APA PsycInfo database from Ovid to EBSCOhost: A tutorial based on a filter translation	3
Retrospective median power, false positive meta‐analysis and large‐scale replication	3
	3

Feasibility and desirability of screening search results from Google Search exhaustively for systematic reviews: A cross‐case analysis	3
Response to: ‘Additional considerations and response to Graphical Representation of Overlap for OVErviews (GROOVE tool)”	3
Meta‐analysis of prevalence: I2 statistic and how to deal with heterogeneity	3
Response to Hemilä and Chalker's “Pitfalls in choosing data examples for methodological work: Bayesian approaches to a fixed effects meta‐analysis of zinc lozenges for the common cold”	3
	3
Two‐stage or not two‐stage? That is the question for IPD meta‐analysis projects	3
Meta-analysis with Jeffreys priors: Empirical frequentist properties	3
Why do researchers co‐author evidence syntheses with librarians? A mixed‐methods study	3
Key concepts and reporting recommendations for mapping reviews: A scoping review of 68 guidance and methodological studies	3
Issue Information	3
A new taxonomy was developed for overlap across 'overviews of systematic reviews': A meta‐research study of research waste	3
How trace plots help interpret meta‐analysis results	2
Limits in the search date for rapid reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies	2
Estimating pairwise overlap in umbrella reviews: Considerations for using the corrected covered area (CCA) index methodology	2
Inconsistent results for Peto odds ratios in multi‐arm studies, network meta‐analysis and indirect comparisons	2
A REML method for the evidence‐splitting model in network meta‐analysis	2
ZIBGLMM: Zero-inflated bivariate generalized linear mixed model for meta-analysis with double-zero-event studies	2
An open competition involving thousands of competitors failed to construct useful abstract classifiers for new diagnostic test accuracy systematic reviews	2
Meta‐analyzing partial correlation coefficients using Fisher's z transformation	2
Language inclusion in ecological systematic reviews and maps: Barriers and perspectives	2
Generalizable and scalable multistage biomedical concept normalization leveraging large language models	2
Automated citation searching in systematic review production: A simulation study	2
Data sharing—trialists' plans at registration, attitudes, barriers and facilitators: A cohort study and cross‐sectional survey	2
A non‐parametric approach for jointly combining evidence on progression free and overall survival time in network meta‐analysis	2
	2
Bayesian pairwise meta‐analysis of time‐to‐event outcomes in the presence of non‐proportional hazards: A simulation study of flexible parametric, piecewise exponential and fractional polynomial models	2
TheCONSENSYSapproach: An instrument to supportCONtextual SENsitivityinSYStematicreviews	2
Examining how meta‐analytic methods perform in the presence of bias: A simulation study	2
metaCOVID: A web‐application for living meta‐analyses of COVID‐19 trials	2
Adapting how to use Google Search to identify studies for systematic reviews in view of a recent change to how search results are displayed	2
Development of the individual participant data integrity tool for assessing the integrity of randomised trials using individual participant data	2
Examining how meta‐analytic methods perform	2
Zero‐ and few‐shot prompting of generative large language models provides weak assessment of risk of bias in clinical trials	2
Bayesian approaches to fixed effects meta‐analysis	2
Robust Bayesian meta‐analysis: Model‐averaging across complementary publication bias adjustment methods	2
Identifying and managing problematic trials: A research integrity assessment tool for randomized controlled trials in evidence synthesis	2
Evaluation of the comprehensiveness, accuracy and currency of the Cochrane COVID‐19 Study Register for supporting rapid evidence synthesis production	2
Predatory journals and their practices present a conundrum for systematic reviewers and evidence synthesisers of health research: A qualitative descriptive study	2
Using clinical trial registries to inform Copas selection model for publication bias in meta‐analysis	2
Effect modification and non-collapsibility together may lead to conflicting treatment decisions: A review of marginal and conditional estimands and recommendations for decision-making	2
Identifying unreported links between ClinicalTrials.gov trial registrations and their published results	2