Niederstadt 2010

Appraisal of: “Niederstadt C, Droste S. Reporting and presenting information retrieval processes: the need for optimizing common practice in health technology assessment. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 2010;26(4):450-7.”

Reviewer(s):

Dagmara Chojecki
Lisa Tjosvold

Full Reference:
Niederstadt C, Droste S. Reporting and presenting information retrieval processes: the need for optimizing common practice in health technology assessment. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 2010;26(4):450-7.

Short description:

The authors aim to promote good information retrieval practices by presenting the retrieval and transcription of complex search strategies in a transparent way and to document more accurately the search strategies. Conducted a comprehensive search for reporting standards and describe elements of search strategy reporting from the standards. The authors make recommendations for reporting the whole information retrieval process, which consist of the following steps: 1. Defining search components using PICO and additional components 2. Defining the search models. 3. Selection of information sources 4. Transcripts of search strategies. They provide templates with examples for each of the steps. They also recommend transcribing search details from PubMed and using the PRESS checklist for peer review of the search.

Limitations stated by the author(s):

None stated.

Limitations stated by the reviewer(s):

A final listing of all the included reporting standards found in the search would have been helpful.

Study Type:

Review

Related Chapters:

Documenting and reporting the search process

Tags:

• Documenting

• Guidance document