Research Synthesis Methods

Article	Citations
Accuracy of conversion formula for effect sizes: A Monte Carlo simulation	311
An investigation of the impact of using contrast- and arm-synthesis models for network meta-analysis	270
Advice for improving the reproducibility of data extraction in meta‐analysis	158
Reported methodological quality of medical systematic reviews: Development of an assessment tool (ReMarQ) and meta-research study	123
Facilitating open science practices for research syntheses: PreregRS guides preregistration	123
A mapping exercise using automated techniques to develop a search strategy to identify systematic review tools	100
Towards the automatic risk of bias assessment on randomized controlled trials: A comparison of RobotReviewer and humans	86
Meta‐analyses of partial correlations are biased: Detection and solutions	69
Assessment of key characteristics, methodology, and effect size measures used in meta‐analysis of human‐health‐related animal studies	64
The age of abundant scholarly information and its synthesis– A time when ‘just google it’ is no longer enough	62
What are the best methods for rapid reviews of the research evidence? A systematic review of reviews and primary studies	57
Including non‐English language articles in systematic reviews: A reflection on processes for identifying low‐cost sources of translation support	52
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CausalMetaR: An R package for performing causally interpretable meta-analyses	36
Fast‐and‐frugal decision tree for the rapid critical appraisal of systematic reviews	35
Bias propagation in network meta‐analysis models	32
Retrieving Cochrane reviews is sometimes challenging and their reporting is not always optimal	30
Authors’ reply: Continuity corrections with Mantel–Haenszel estimators in Cochrane reviews	30
Exploring graphical approaches to assess the impact of an additional trial on a decision model via updated meta-analysis	28
Correct standard errors can bias meta‐analysis	27
Network meta analysis to predict the efficacy of an approved treatment in a new indication	26
A comprehensive systematic review dataset is a rich resource for training and evaluation of AI systems for title and abstract screening	25
Reporting of Cochrane systematic review protocols with network meta‐analyses—A scoping review	25
Synthesis of depression outcomes reported on different scales: A comparison of methods for modelling mean differences	24

Methods for population adjustment with limited access to individual patient data: A review and simulation study	23
Evaluation of semi-automated record screening methods for systematic reviews of prognosis studies and intervention studies	23
Selecting a specialized education database for literature reviews and evidence synthesis projects	21
Capturing causal claims: A fine-tuned text mining model for extracting causal sentences from social science papers	21
Calculating the power of a planned individual participant data meta‐analysis to examine prognostic factor effects for a binary outcome	21
Data extraction for evidence synthesis using a large language model: A proof‐of‐concept study	21
Regarding approaches to simulating random‐effects	20
Issue Information	20
Bayesian Federated Inference for regression models based on non-shared medical center data	20
How to plan and manage an individual participant data meta‐analysis. An illustrative toolkit	20
Cumulative meta‐analysis: What works	19
Issue Information	19
Graphical tools for visualizing the results of network meta‐analysis of multicomponent interventions	19
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	19
Parametric G‐computation for compatible indirect treatment comparisons with limited individual patient data	18
Six ways to handle dependent effect sizes in meta-analytic structural equation modeling: Is there a gold standard?	18
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Population adjusted‐indirect comparisons in health technology assessment: A methodological systematic review	18
Bibliometric study of ‘overviews of systematic reviews’ of health interventions: Evaluation of prevalence, citation and journal impact factor	17
Inclusive critical appraisal of qualitative and quantitative findings in evidence synthesis	17
Evaluation of statistical methods used to meta‐analyse results from interrupted time series studies: A simulation study	16
Double arcsine transform not appropriate for meta‐analysis	16
Missingness mechanism messiness in meta‐analysis: A response to “The importance of plausible data‐generating mechanisms in simulation studies”	16
Validation of large language models (Llama 3 and ChatGPT-4o mini) for title and abstract screening in biomedical systematic reviews	16
Impact of trial attrition rates on treatment effect estimates in chronic inflammatory diseases: A meta‐epidemiological study	16
Critical appraisal tools used in systematic reviews of in vitro cell culture studies: A methodological study	16
RIMeta: An R shiny tool for estimating the reference interval from a meta‐analysis	15
Twenty years of network meta‐analysis: Continuing controversies and recent developments	15
A semiparametric approach for meta‐analysis of diagnostic accuracy studies with multiple cut‐offs	15
Using qualitative comparative analysis as a mixed methods synthesis in systematic mixed studies reviews: Guidance and a worked example	15
Causally interpretable meta‐analysis: Clearly defined causal effects and two case studies	15
A practical guide to evaluating sensitivity of literature search strings for systematic reviews using relative recall	14
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Issue Information	13
Issue Information	13
Continuity corrections with Mantel–Haenszel estimators in Cochrane reviews	13
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Appropriateness of conducting and reporting random‐effects meta‐analysis in oncology	12
Crowdsourcing the identification of studies for COVID‐19‐related Cochrane Rapid Reviews	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
Tipping point analysis in network meta-analysis	11
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
Using systems perspectives in evidence synthesis: A methodological mapping review	11
Reduce, reuse, recycle: Introducing MetaPipeX, a framework for analyses of multi‐lab data	11
Issue Information	10
An evaluation of the performance of stopping rules in AI‐aided screening for psychological meta‐analytical research	10
A re‐analysis of about 60,000 sparse data meta‐analyses suggests that using an adequate method for pooling matters	10
Accuracy and precision of fixed and random effects in meta‐analyses of randomized control trials for continuous outcomes	10
Rare events meta‐analysis using the Bayesian beta‐binomial model	10
Combining meta‐analysis with multiple imputation for one‐step, privacy‐protecting estimation of causal treatment effects in multi‐site studies	10

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Commercial funding and estimated intervention effects in randomized clinical trials: Systematic review of meta‐epidemiological studies	10
Development of a search filter to retrieve reports of interrupted time series studies from MEDLINE and PubMed	10
Exploring methodological approaches used in network meta‐analysis of psychological interventions: A scoping review	9
How should we handle predatory journals in evidence synthesis? A descriptive survey‐based cross‐sectional study of evidence synthesis experts	9
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Reverse‐Bayes methods for evidence assessment and research synthesis	9
A novel robust meta-analysis model using the t distribution for outlier accommodation and detection	9
Searchsmart.org: Guiding researchers to the best databases and search systems for systematic reviews and beyond	9
Estimating interactions and subgroup‐specific treatment effects in meta‐analysis without aggregation bias: A within‐trial framework	8
Network meta‐analysis: Looping back	8
Graphical Representation of Overlap for OVErviews: GROOVE tool	8
Adjusting for misclassification of an exposure in an individual participant data meta‐analysis	8
Meta‐analyses of phase I dose‐finding studies: Application for the development of protein kinase inhibitors in oncology	8
On the bias of complete‐ and shifting‐case meta‐regressions with missing covariates	7
Machine learning for identifying randomised controlled trials when conducting systematic reviews: Development and evaluation of its impact on practice	7
Sample size calculation for clinical trials analyzed with the meta‐analytic‐predictive approach	7
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Consensus on the definition and assessment of external validity of randomized controlled trials: A Delphi study	7
Subsequent full publication of qualitative studies presented at United Kingdom Royal College of Nursing Research Conference 2015 and 2016: A follow‐up study	7
A critical reflection on computing the sampling variance of the partial correlation coefficient	7
Methodological considerations for novel approaches to covariate‐adjusted indirect treatment comparisons	7
Treatment recommendations based on network meta-analysis: Rules for risk-averse decision-makers	7
Rapid evidence synthesis approach for limits on the search date: How rapid could it be?	7
Scoping review search practices in the social sciences: A scoping review	7
Meta‐regression methods to characterize evidence strength using meaningful‐effect percentages conditional on study characteristics	7
Methods for using Bing's AI‐powered search engine for data extraction for a systematic review	7
Exact inference for fixed‐effects meta‐analysis of proportions	7
Network meta-analysis made simple: A composite likelihood approach	7
When conducting a systematic review, can one trade search efficiency for potential publication bias?	6
Identifying evidence for five realist reviews in primary health care: A comparison of search methods	6
metamedian: An R package for meta‐analyzing studies reporting medians	6
Meta‐analysis of dichotomous and ordinal tests with an imperfect gold standard	6
Issue Information	6
On ratio measures of heterogeneity for meta‐analyses	6
Robust variance estimation in small meta‐analysis with the standardized mean difference	6
Development and validation of a geographic search filter for MEDLINE (PubMed) to identify studies about Germany	6
Citationchaser: A tool for transparent and efficient forward and backward citation chasing in systematic searching	6
ccaR: A package for assessing primary study overlap across systematic reviews in overviews	5
Ten practices for successful study coding in research syntheses: Developing coding manuals and coding forms	5
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Assessment of temporal instability in the applied ecology and conservation evidence base	5
Issue Information	5
Improved methods to construct prediction intervals for network meta‐analysis	5
A tutorial on aggregating evidence from conceptual replication studies using the product Bayes factor	5
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	5
Correction to “Network Meta‐Interpolation: Effect modification adjustment in network meta‐analysis using subgroup analyses”	5
Footprint of publication selection bias on meta‐analyses in medicine, environmental sciences, psychology, and economics	5
Two decades of network meta‐analysis: Roadmap to their applications and challenges	5
Advancing unanchored simulated treatment comparisons: A novel implementation and simulation study	5
Avoiding common mistakes in meta‐analysis: Understanding the distinct roles of Q, I‐squared, tau‐squared, and the prediction interval in reporting heterogeneity	4
Issue Information	4
‘Twenty years of network meta‐analysis: Continuing controversies and recent developments’: A health technology assessment perspective	4
Risk of bias assessment in preclinical literature using natural language processing	4
Comparing methods for handling missing covariates in meta‐regression	4
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
Visualization toolkits for enriching meta-analyses through evidence maps, bibliometrics, and alternative impact metrics	4
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Combining estimators in interlaboratory studies and meta‐analyses	4
A framework to characterise the reproducibility of meta‐analysis results with its application to direct oral anticoagulants in the acute treatment of venous thromboembolism	4
Evolving use of the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 tool in biomedical systematic reviews	4
Making the case for librarian expertise to support evidence synthesis for the sustainable development goals	4
Two‐stage or not two‐stage? That is the question for IPD meta‐analysis projects	4
Evaluation of the interim Cochrane rapid review methods guidance—A mixed‐methods study on the understanding of and adherence to the guidance	4
Uncertain about uncertainty in matching‐adjusted indirect comparisons? A simulation study to compare methods for variance estimation	3
A comparison of two models for detecting inconsistency in network meta‐analysis	3
A new taxonomy was developed for overlap across 'overviews of systematic reviews': A meta‐research study of research waste	3
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Feasibility and desirability of screening search results from Google Search exhaustively for systematic reviews: A cross‐case analysis	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
Developing prediction models when there are systematically missing predictors in individual patient data meta‐analysis	3
Meta-analysis with Jeffreys priors: Empirical frequentist properties	3
In‐depth evaluation of machine learning methods for semi‐automating article screening in a systematic review of mechanistic literature	3
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Why do researchers co‐author evidence syntheses with librarians? A mixed‐methods study	3
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Bayesian random‐effects meta‐analysis with empirical heterogeneity priors for application in health technology assessment with very few studies	3
Investigation of bias due to selective inclusion of study effect estimates in meta‐analyses of nutrition research	3
Meta‐analysis of prevalence: I2 statistic and how to deal with heterogeneity	3

A comprehensive review and shiny application on the matching‐adjusted indirect comparison	3
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Retrospective median power, false positive meta‐analysis and large‐scale replication	3
Key concepts and reporting recommendations for mapping reviews: A scoping review of 68 guidance and methodological studies	3
Issue Information	3
Synthesizing evidence from the earliest studies to support decision‐making: To what extent could the evidence be reliable?	3
Response to: ‘Additional considerations and response to Graphical Representation of Overlap for OVErviews (GROOVE tool)”	3
Estimation of heterogeneity variance based on a generalized Q statistic in meta‐analysis of log‐odds‐ratio	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
metaCOVID: A web‐application for living meta‐analyses of COVID‐19 trials	2
The use of fixed study main effects in arm‐based network meta‐analysis	2
Robust Bayesian meta‐analysis: Model‐averaging across complementary publication bias adjustment methods	2
Generalizable and scalable multistage biomedical concept normalization leveraging large language models	2
Examining how meta‐analytic methods perform in the presence of bias: A simulation study	2
A REML method for the evidence‐splitting model in network meta‐analysis	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
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
Meta‐analyzing partial correlation coefficients using Fisher's z transformation	2
TheCONSENSYSapproach: An instrument to supportCONtextual SENsitivityinSYStematicreviews	2
Predatory journals and their practices present a conundrum for systematic reviewers and evidence synthesisers of health research: A qualitative descriptive study	2
Limits in the search date for rapid reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies	2
Bayesian approaches to fixed effects meta‐analysis	2
Examining how meta‐analytic methods perform	2
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Combining endpoint and change data did not affect the summary standardised mean difference in pairwise and network meta‐analyses: An empirical study in depression	2
Beyond Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science: An evaluation of the backward and forward citation coverage of 59 databases' citation indices	2
Language inclusion in ecological systematic reviews and maps: Barriers and perspectives	2
How trace plots help interpret meta‐analysis results	2
Evaluation of the comprehensiveness, accuracy and currency of the Cochrane COVID‐19 Study Register for supporting rapid evidence synthesis production	2
An open competition involving thousands of competitors failed to construct useful abstract classifiers for new diagnostic test accuracy systematic reviews	2
Identifying unreported links between ClinicalTrials.gov trial registrations and their published results	2
Translating systematic searches in the APA PsycInfo database from Ovid to EBSCOhost: A tutorial based on a filter translation	2
Estimating pairwise overlap in umbrella reviews: Considerations for using the corrected covered area (CCA) index methodology	2
On the double‐robustness and semiparametric efficiency of matching‐adjusted indirect comparisons	2
Identifying and managing problematic trials: A research integrity assessment tool for randomized controlled trials in evidence synthesis	2
Zero‐ and few‐shot prompting of generative large language models provides weak assessment of risk of bias in clinical trials	2
Automated citation searching in systematic review production: A simulation study	2
Development of the individual participant data integrity tool for assessing the integrity of randomised trials using individual participant data	2
A non‐parametric approach for jointly combining evidence on progression free and overall survival time in network meta‐analysis	2
ZIBGLMM: Zero-inflated bivariate generalized linear mixed model for meta-analysis with double-zero-event studies	2