Systematic reviews and tech mining: A methodological comparison with case study

Abstract

When the Medical Library Association identified questions critical for the future of the profession, it assigned groups to use systematic reviews to find the answers to these questions. Group 6, whose question was on emerging technologies, recognized early on that the systematic review process would not work well for this question, which looks forward to predict future trends, whereas the systematic review process looks back in time. We searched for new methodologies that were more appropriate to our question, developing a process that combined systematic review, text mining, and visualization techniques. We then discovered tech mining, which is very similar to the process we had created. In this paper, we describe our research design and compare tech mining and systematic review methodologies. There are similarities and differences in each process: Both use a defined research question, deliberate database selection, careful and iterative search strategy development, broad data collection, and thoughtful data analysis. However, the focus of the research differs significantly, with systematic reviews looking to the past and tech mining mainly to the future. Our comparison demonstrates that each process can be enhanced from a purposeful consideration of the procedures of the other. Tech mining would benefit from the inclusion of a librarian on their research team and a greater attention to standards and collaboration in the research project. Systematic reviews would gain from the use of tech mining tools to enrich their data analysis and corporate management communication techniques to promote the adoption of their findings.

State of the art, state of the science?

“…Collaborations span institutions and the academic‐commercial divide . Academic review organizations (eg, ScHARR, PenTag, and YHEC) and health technology agencies (eg, CADTH) and networks (such as Cochrane , and the Medical Library Association collaboration) continue to play a critical part. Interest in sources and in indexing for retrieval persists through the decades.…”

“…We still need more plentiful and more robust evidence to compare between methods, approaches, and sources, particularly when contrasting comprehensive, exhaustive searches with purposive, theoretical sampling, and systematic reviews to rapid approaches (Comparison) . Considerable potential exists to learn from other methodologies and disciplines, emphasized by the illuminative comparison in this issue between systematic review methodologies and the science of tech mining from engineering and corporate research and development . At the same time technologies offer the prospect of accelerated research while review management data gathered along the way (such as Included/Excluded studies, yield from specific sources, and PRISMA statistics) open up opportunities for secondary data analysis ( Study types ).…”

Literature-Based Enrichment Insights into Redox Control of Vascular Biology

“…This problem is addressed through text mining. Different aspects of text mining and a complementary set of techniques for the so-called natural language processing (NLP) have been applied for the exploration of biomedical information from free text [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Innovation in information retrieval methods for evidence synthesis studies

“…18 Anderson and colleagues consider how evidence is curated and managed in the context of systematic reviews and compares this with the field of tech mining. 19 The paper draws parallels and identifies differences demonstrating the mutual benefits of how two different fields might learn and share practice and in so doing complement and advance each other.…”

“…The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art and sets the research agenda for the development of search methods in the field of evidence‐based food production, food safety, plant health and animal health and welfare . Anderson and colleagues consider how evidence is curated and managed in the context of systematic reviews and compares this with the field of tech mining . The paper draws parallels and identifies differences demonstrating the mutual benefits of how two different fields might learn and share practice and in so doing complement and advance each other.…”