Research Synthesis Methods

Article	Citations
An investigation of the impact of using contrast- and arm-synthesis models for network meta-analysis	235
A mapping exercise using automated techniques to develop a search strategy to identify systematic review tools	181
Towards the automatic risk of bias assessment on randomized controlled trials: A comparison of RobotReviewer and humans	158
Advice for improving the reproducibility of data extraction in meta‐analysis	152
Reported methodological quality of medical systematic reviews: Development of an assessment tool (ReMarQ) and meta-research study	121
What are the best methods for rapid reviews of the research evidence? A systematic review of reviews and primary studies	105
Meta‐analyses of partial correlations are biased: Detection and solutions	89
Bayesian workflow for bias-adjustment model in meta-analysis	88
Meta-analytic-predictive priors based on a single study	85
How to conduct an individual participant data meta-analysis in response to an emerging pathogen: Lessons learned from Zika and COVID-19	77
Lord’s Paradox and two network meta-analysis models	70
Transforming evidence synthesis: A systematic review of the evolution of automated meta-analysis in the age of AI	62
	62
Synthesis of depression outcomes reported on different scales: A comparison of methods for modelling mean differences	58
Network meta analysis to predict the efficacy of an approved treatment in a new indication	50
Exploring graphical approaches to assess the impact of an additional trial on a decision model via updated meta-analysis	48
CausalMetaR: An R package for performing causally interpretable meta-analyses	46
Capturing causal claims: A fine-tuned text mining model for extracting causal sentences from social science papers	43
A comprehensive systematic review dataset is a rich resource for training and evaluation of AI systems for title and abstract screening	40
Fast‐and‐frugal decision tree for the rapid critical appraisal of systematic reviews	37
Data extraction for evidence synthesis using a large language model: A proof‐of‐concept study	36
Bias propagation in network meta‐analysis models	35
Authors’ reply: Continuity corrections with Mantel–Haenszel estimators in Cochrane reviews	34
Correct standard errors can bias meta‐analysis	32
Evaluation of the replicability of systematic reviews with meta-analyses of the effects of health interventions	31

Exploring the methodological quality and risk of bias in 200 systematic reviews: A comparative study of ROBIS and AMSTAR-2 tools	30
Evaluation of semi-automated record screening methods for systematic reviews of prognosis studies and intervention studies	29
A meta-research review of the use of flexible meta-regression in biomedical systematic reviews published between 2011 and 2021	29
Incorporating the possibility of cure into network meta-analyses: A case study from resected Stage III/IV melanoma	29
Estimands and their implications for evidence synthesis for oncology: A simulation study of treatment switching in meta-analysis	27
Graphical tools for visualizing the results of network meta‐analysis of multicomponent interventions	26
Bayesian Federated Inference for regression models based on non-shared medical center data	25
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	23
Calculating the power of a planned individual participant data meta‐analysis to examine prognostic factor effects for a binary outcome	22
How to plan and manage an individual participant data meta‐analysis. An illustrative toolkit	21
Issue Information	20
Selecting a specialized education database for literature reviews and evidence synthesis projects	20
	19
Missingness mechanism messiness in meta‐analysis: A response to “The importance of plausible data‐generating mechanisms in simulation studies”	19
Inclusive critical appraisal of qualitative and quantitative findings in evidence synthesis	19
Impact of trial attrition rates on treatment effect estimates in chronic inflammatory diseases: A meta‐epidemiological study	19
Critical appraisal tools used in systematic reviews of in vitro cell culture studies: A methodological study	19
Six ways to handle dependent effect sizes in meta-analytic structural equation modeling: Is there a gold standard?	18
Evaluation of statistical methods used to meta‐analyse results from interrupted time series studies: A simulation study	18
Using qualitative comparative analysis as a mixed methods synthesis in systematic mixed studies reviews: Guidance and a worked example	18
Population adjusted‐indirect comparisons in health technology assessment: A methodological systematic review	17
Validation of large language models (Llama 3 and ChatGPT-4o mini) for title and abstract screening in biomedical systematic reviews	16
Combining search filters for randomized controlled trials with the Cochrane RCT Classifier in Covidence: a methodological validation study	16
Twenty years of network meta‐analysis: Continuing controversies and recent developments	16
RIMeta: An R shiny tool for estimating the reference interval from a meta‐analysis	16
Mixed-effects two-stage residual inclusion methods for individual patient data meta-analysis: A methodological framework for causal inference in survival analysis	15
Issue Information	15
A causal meta-analysis framework for clinical trials with unequal randomization ratios	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	15
Reduce, reuse, recycle: Introducing MetaPipeX, a framework for analyses of multi‐lab data	14
Pitfalls in choosing data examples for methodological work: Bayesian approaches to a fixed effects meta‐analysis of zinc lozenges for the common cold	14
	14
Appropriateness of conducting and reporting random‐effects meta‐analysis in oncology	13
Issue Information	13
Tipping point analysis in network meta-analysis	12
An evaluation of the performance of stopping rules in AI‐aided screening for psychological meta‐analytical research	12
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	11
Combining meta‐analysis with multiple imputation for one‐step, privacy‐protecting estimation of causal treatment effects in multi‐site studies	11
Assessing risk of bias of cohort studies with large language models	11
Using systems perspectives in evidence synthesis: A methodological mapping review	11
Continuity corrections with Mantel–Haenszel estimators in Cochrane reviews	11
Accuracy and precision of fixed and random effects in meta‐analyses of randomized control trials for continuous outcomes	11
Using Elicit AI research assistant for data extraction in systematic reviews: A feasibility study across environmental and life sciences	11
Commercial funding and estimated intervention effects in randomized clinical trials: Systematic review of meta‐epidemiological studies	11
Rare events meta‐analysis using the Bayesian beta‐binomial model	11
Evaluating the accuracy and speed of eight deduplication tools: A comparative study	10
Meta‐analyses of phase I dose‐finding studies: Application for the development of protein kinase inhibitors in oncology	10
Methodological considerations for novel approaches to covariate‐adjusted indirect treatment comparisons	10

How should we handle predatory journals in evidence synthesis? A descriptive survey‐based cross‐sectional study of evidence synthesis experts	10
	10
Exploring methodological approaches used in network meta‐analysis of psychological interventions: A scoping review	10
Network meta‐analysis: Looping back	10
Adjusting for misclassification of an exposure in an individual participant data meta‐analysis	10
Issue Information	10
Methods for using Bing's AI‐powered search engine for data extraction for a systematic review	10
A novel robust meta-analysis model using the t distribution for outlier accommodation and detection	10
Machine learning for identifying randomised controlled trials when conducting systematic reviews: Development and evaluation of its impact on practice	9
Sample size calculation for clinical trials analyzed with the meta‐analytic‐predictive approach	9
Meta-analytic pooling of intraclass correlation coefficient estimates	9
A critical reflection on computing the sampling variance of the partial correlation coefficient	9
	9
Network meta-analysis made simple: A composite likelihood approach	9
NMADTA: An R package for network meta-analysis of multiple diagnostic tests	9
Issue Information	9
Treatment recommendations based on network meta-analysis: Rules for risk-averse decision-makers	9
Searchsmart.org: Guiding researchers to the best databases and search systems for systematic reviews and beyond	9
Consensus on the definition and assessment of external validity of randomized controlled trials: A Delphi study	9
StudyTypeTeller—Large language models to automatically classify research study types for systematic reviews	9
ccaR: A package for assessing primary study overlap across systematic reviews in overviews	8
Development and validation of a geographic search filter for MEDLINE (PubMed) to identify studies about Germany	8
metamedian: An R package for meta‐analyzing studies reporting medians	8
When conducting a systematic review, can one trade search efficiency for potential publication bias?	8
Scoping review search practices in the social sciences: A scoping review	8
Robust variance estimation in small meta‐analysis with the standardized mean difference	8
Bayes factor hypothesis testing in meta-analyses: Practical advantages and methodological considerations	7
Assessment of temporal instability in the applied ecology and conservation evidence base	7
Treatment switching in evidence synthesis in oncology: A systematic review of current meta-analytical practices	7
	7
Facilitators and barriers to engaging patient partners in knowledge syntheses: A stage-based approach	7
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	6
Advancing unanchored simulated treatment comparisons: A novel implementation and simulation study	6
A tutorial on aggregating evidence from conceptual replication studies using the product Bayes factor	6
Ten practices for successful study coding in research syntheses: Developing coding manuals and coding forms	6
BibliZap: An exploratory evaluation of an automated multi-level citation searching tool for systematic and rapid reviews	6
Correction to “Network Meta‐Interpolation: Effect modification adjustment in network meta‐analysis using subgroup analyses”	6
Footprint of publication selection bias on meta‐analyses in medicine, environmental sciences, psychology, and economics	6
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	6
Diagnostic test accuracy meta-analysis based on an exact within-study variance calculation method	6
Shiny-MAGEC: A Bayesian R shiny application for meta-analysis of censored adverse events	6
Improved methods to construct prediction intervals for network meta‐analysis	6
Evolving use of the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 tool in biomedical systematic reviews	6
Two decades of network meta‐analysis: Roadmap to their applications and challenges	6
The hazards of using hazard ratios from proportional hazard models in indirect treatment comparisons	6
Personalized treatment hierarchies in Bayesian network meta-analysis	6
Evaluation of the interim Cochrane rapid review methods guidance—A mixed‐methods study on the understanding of and adherence to the guidance	5
Making sense of conducting a critical interpretive synthesis: A scoping review	5
A framework to characterise the reproducibility of meta‐analysis results with its application to direct oral anticoagulants in the acute treatment of venous thromboembolism	5
Strategizing AI utilization for psychological literature screening: A comparative analysis of machine learning algorithms and key factors to consider	5
Meta-analysis with Jeffreys priors: Empirical frequentist properties	5
Incorporating estimands into meta-analyses of clinical trials	5
Visualization toolkits for enriching meta-analyses through evidence maps, bibliometrics, and alternative impact metrics	5
‘Twenty years of network meta‐analysis: Continuing controversies and recent developments’: A health technology assessment perspective	5
Comparing methods for handling missing covariates in meta‐regression	5
Uncertain about uncertainty in matching‐adjusted indirect comparisons? A simulation study to compare methods for variance estimation	5
Two‐stage or not two‐stage? That is the question for IPD meta‐analysis projects	5
	5
What level of automation is “good enough”? A benchmark of large language models for meta-analysis data extraction	5
Combining estimators in interlaboratory studies and meta‐analyses	5
Avoiding common mistakes in meta‐analysis: Understanding the distinct roles of Q, I‐squared, tau‐squared, and the prediction interval in reporting heterogeneity	5
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”	5
	5
A comprehensive review and shiny application on the matching‐adjusted indirect comparison	4
Methods of multi-indication meta-analysis for health technology assessment: A simulation study	4
Aggregating and analysing clinical trials data from multiple public registers using R package ctrdata	4
Back-transformations in random-effects meta-analysis—Impact and interpretation	4
Paperfetcher: A tool to automate handsearching and citation searching for systematic reviews	4
Reverse chronology quota record screening for realist synthesis: Fostering causally rich extrapolations with a diverse and contemporaneous sample of literature	4
Developing prediction models when there are systematically missing predictors in individual patient data meta‐analysis	4
Why do researchers co‐author evidence syntheses with librarians? A mixed‐methods study	4
Simple imputation method for meta-analysis of survival rates when precision information is missing	4
Feasibility and desirability of screening search results from Google Search exhaustively for systematic reviews: A cross‐case analysis	4
	4
Estimation of heterogeneity variance based on a generalized Q statistic in meta‐analysis of log‐odds‐ratio	4
Barriers to searching for grey literature in systematic reviews: A survey of authors and editors	4
metaConvert: an automatic suite for estimation of 11 different effect size measures and flexible conversion across them	4
A comparison of two models for detecting inconsistency in network meta‐analysis	4
How comprehensive is comprehensive? Prevalence of searches beyond peer-reviewed journal articles and bibliographic sources: a cross-sectional study of systematic reviews	4
	4

Bayesian random‐effects meta‐analysis with empirical heterogeneity priors for application in health technology assessment with very few studies	4
Investigation of bias due to selective inclusion of study effect estimates in meta‐analyses of nutrition research	4
Key concepts and reporting recommendations for mapping reviews: A scoping review of 68 guidance and methodological studies	3
Beyond human gold standards: A multimodel framework for automated abstract classification and information extraction	3
ZIBGLMM: Zero-inflated bivariate generalized linear mixed model for meta-analysis with double-zero-event studies	3
Estimating pairwise overlap in umbrella reviews: Considerations for using the corrected covered area (CCA) index methodology	3
Predatory journals and their practices present a conundrum for systematic reviewers and evidence synthesisers of health research: A qualitative descriptive study	3
Meta-regression with categorical moderators and dependent effect sizes: A simulation study	3
An open competition involving thousands of competitors failed to construct useful abstract classifiers for new diagnostic test accuracy systematic reviews	3
Translating systematic searches in the APA PsycInfo database from Ovid to EBSCOhost: A tutorial based on a filter translation	3
Limits in the search date for rapid reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies	3
TheCONSENSYSapproach: An instrument to supportCONtextual SENsitivityinSYStematicreviews	3
Identifying and managing problematic trials: A research integrity assessment tool for randomized controlled trials in evidence synthesis	3
A comparison of preprint search aggregators: comprehensive identification of preprints in the information retrieval stage of evidence syntheses	3
The use of fixed study main effects in arm‐based network meta‐analysis	3
The application of ROBINS-I guidance in systematic reviews of non-randomised studies: A descriptive study	3
metaCOVID: A web‐application for living meta‐analyses of COVID‐19 trials	3
Robust Bayesian meta‐analysis: Model‐averaging across complementary publication bias adjustment methods	3
Generalizable and scalable multistage biomedical concept normalization leveraging large language models	3
Automating the data extraction process for systematic reviews using GPT-4o and o3	3