Numerous studies have demonstrated the poor quality of published
systematic reviews, which often includes poorly conducted and reported
search strategies. While many groups (such as PRISMA) provide
recommendations on how to report search strategies, it's unclear how
rigorously the search strategies are reviewed during the peer review
process. At minimum, we would expect egregious search strategy issues to
be addressed through peer review, but we hypothesized that this is
seldom the case. We were able to explore this hypothesis through open
peer review (OPR). We analyzed the search strategies of published
systematic reviews, and then looked for search-related comments in the
associated OPR documentation.
In this webinar, Taubman Library Talks co-hosts Mark MacEachern and
Whitney Townsend will pull back the curtain on a pre-Covid research
project that didn't quite make it to the publishing finish
line. In addition to discussing the methods and results of the project,
Mark and Whitney will give an open and honest assessment of the
project's challenges, what they learned from them, and what they might
do differently in the future.
Draft manuscript "Analyzing Peer Review Practices of Systematic
Review Search Methodology through Open Peer Review " (Deep Blue
Documents) https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/23162