NTP participates in international systematic reviews meeting
One way society benefits from the vast amount of research data is through systematic reviews. A systematic review collects carefully selected studies that summarize scientific evidence to answer a specific question. Researchers in the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR) want to automate parts of the systematic review process, to make it rapid, accurate, and efficient, and to encourage widespread acceptance of these automated techniques.
The third ICASR meeting was held October 2017 and received funding from the National Toxicology Program (NTP). ICASR member Mary Wolfe, Ph.D., director of the NTP Office of Liaison, Policy, and Review, participated in the meeting. Attendees concluded that the most pressing needs were to develop approaches for validating currently available tools and providing increased access to curated collections of text that can be used for validation.
Although there was agreement on the increased availability of tools in automating systemic reviews, workflow feasibility and acceptance of these tools remain a challenge. The group decided that the goals for the coming year would include developing an ICASR website and creating guidelines for evaluating tools and reporting automated tasks for systematic reviews. (SK)
Citation: O’Connor AM, Tsafnat G, Gilbert SB, Thayer KA, Shemilt I, Thomas J, Glasziou P, Wolfe MS. 2019. Still moving toward automation of the systematic review process: a summary of discussions at the third meeting of the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR). Syst Rev 8(1):57.