Citation Discovery Tools for Conducting Adaptive Meta-analyses to Update Systematic Reviews

OBJECTIVES: The systematic review (SR) is a research methodology that aims to synthesize related evidence. Updating previously conducted SRs is necessary when new evidence has been produced, but no consensus has yet emerged on the appropriate update methodology. The authors have developed a new SR update method called ‘adaptive meta-analysis’ (AMA) using the ‘cited by’, ‘similar articles’, and ‘related articles’ citation discovery tools in the PubMed and Scopus databases. This study evaluates the usefulness of these citation discovery tools for updating SRs. METHODS: Lists were constructed by applying the citation discovery tools in the two databases to the articles analyzed by a published SR. The degree of overlap between the lists and distribution of excluded results were evaluated. RESULTS: The articles ultimately selected for the SR update meta-analysis were found in the lists obtained from the ‘cited by’ and ‘similar’ tools in PubMed. Most of the selected articles appeared in both the ‘cited by’ lists in Scopus and PubMed. The Scopus ‘related’ tool did not identify the appropriate articles. CONCLUSIONS: The AMA, which involves using both citation discovery tools in PubMed, and optionally, the ‘related’ tool in Scopus, was found to be useful for updating an SR.