Zhao, Z. orcid.org/0000-0002-3060-269X, Thomas, J. orcid.org/0000-0003-4805-4190, Kell, G. et al. (6 more authors) (2024) The FAIR database: facilitating access to public health research literature. JAMIA Open, 7 (4). ooae139. ISSN 2574-2531
Abstract
Objectives
In public health, access to research literature is critical to informing decision-making and to identify knowledge gaps. However, identifying relevant research is not a straightforward task since public health interventions are often complex, can have positive and negative impacts on health inequalities and are applied in diverse and rapidly evolving settings. We developed a “living” database of public health research literature to facilitate access to this information using Natural Language Processing tools.
Materials and Methods
Classifiers were identified to identify the study design (eg, cohort study or clinical trial) and relationship to factors that may be relevant to inequalities using the PROGRESS-Plus classification scheme. Training data were obtained from existing MEDLINE labels and from a set of systematic reviews in which studies were annotated with PROGRESS-Plus categories.
Results
Evaluation of the classifiers showed that the study type classifier achieved average precision and recall of 0.803 and 0.930, respectively. The PROGRESS-Plus classification proved more challenging with average precision and recall of 0.608 and 0.534. The FAIR database uses information provided by these classifiers to facilitate access to inequality-related public health literature.
Discussion
Previous work on automation of evidence synthesis has focused on clinical areas rather than public health, despite the need being arguably greater.
Conclusion
The development of the FAIR database demonstrates that it is possible to create a publicly accessible and regularly updated database of public health research literature focused on inequalities. The database is freely available from https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/eppi-vis/Fair.
NETSCC ID number
NIHR133603.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 18 Dec 2024 10:07 |
Last Modified: | 18 Dec 2024 10:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/jamiaopen/ooae139 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:220889 |