Alexandra Collins

The Role of Google Scholar in Evidence Reviews and Its Applicability to Grey Literature Searching.

Google Scholar (GS), a commonly used web-based academic search engine, catalogues between 2 and 100 million records of both academic and grey literature (articles not formally published by commercial academic publishers). Google Scholar collates results from across the internet and is free to use. As a result it has received considerable attention as a method for searching for literature, particularly in searches for grey literature, as required by systematic reviews. The reliance on GS as a standalone resource has been greatly debated, however, and its efficacy in grey literature searching has not yet been investigated. Using systematic review case studies from environmental science, we investigated the utility of GS in systematic reviews and in searches for grey literature. Our findings show that GS results contain moderate amounts of grey literature, with the majority found on average at page 80. We also found that, when searched for specifically, the majority of literature identified using Web of Science was also found using GS. However, our findings showed moderate/poor overlap in results when similar search strings were used in Web of Science and GS (10–67%), and that GS missed some important literature in five of six case studies. Furthermore, a general GS search failed to find any grey literature from a case study that involved manual searching of organisations’ websites. If used in systematic reviews for grey literature, we recommend that searches of article titles focus on the first 200 to 300 results. We conclude that whilst Google Scholar can find much grey literature and specific, known studies, it should not be used alone for systematic review searches. Rather, it forms a powerful addition to other traditional search methods. In addition, we advocate the use of tools to transparently document and catalogue GS search results to maintain high levels of transparency and the ability to be updated, critical to systematic reviews.

Making literature reviews more reliable through application of lessons from systematic reviews

Review articles can provide valuable summaries of the ever-increasing volume of primary research in conservation biology. Where findings may influence important resource-allocation decisions in policy or practice, there is a need for a high degree of reliability when reviewing evidence. However, traditional literature reviews are susceptible to a number of biases during the identification, selection, and synthesis of included studies (e.g., publication bias, selection bias, and vote counting). Systematic reviews, pioneered in medicine and translated into conservation in 2006, address these issues through a strict methodology that aims to maximize transparency, objectivity, and repeatability. Systematic reviews will always be the gold standard for reliable synthesis of evidence. However, traditional literature reviews remain popular and will continue to be valuable where systematic reviews are not feasible. Where traditional reviews are used, lessons can be taken from systematic reviews and applied to traditional reviews in order to increase their reliability. Certain key aspects of systematic review methods that can be used in a context-specific manner in traditional reviews include focusing on mitigating bias; increasing transparency, consistency, and objectivity, and critically appraising the evidence and avoiding vote counting. In situations where conducting a full systematic review is not feasible, the proposed approach to reviewing evidence in a more systematic way can substantially improve the reliability of review findings, providing a time- and resource-efficient means of maximizing the value of traditional reviews. These methods are aimed particularly at those conducting literature reviews where systematic review is not feasible, for example, for graduate students, single reviewers, or small organizations.

A rapid method to increase transparency and efficiency in web-based searches

BackgroundMany online search facilities allow searching for academic literature. The majority are bibliographic databases that catalogue published research in an iterative, semi-automated manner, e.g. Web of Science Core Collections, which indexes articles published in selected journals. Other resources, such as Google Scholar, identify academic articles by using search engines that crawl the internet for potentially relevant information. Often, systematic reviewers wish to document their searches for transparency or later screening. Indeed, such transparency is a cornerstone of systematic review methodology. Whilst bibliographic databases typically allow users to extract search results as citations in bulk, several other key resources, such as Google Scholar and organisation websites, do not allow this: citations must be extracted individually, which is often prohibitively time consuming.MethodsHere, we describe novel methods for downloading results from searches of websites and web-based search engines into comprehensive databases as citations using free-to-use software. Citations from web-based search engines can then be integrated into review procedures along with those from traditional online bibliographic databases.Results and conclusionsThese methods substantially increase transparency and repeatability when searching online resources. They may also significantly reduce resource requirements for such searches and therefore represent a significant increase in efficiency.

Including non-public data and studies in systematic reviews and systematic maps.

Systematic reviews and maps should be based on the best available evidence, and reviewers should make all reasonable efforts to source and include potentially relevant studies. However, reviewers may not be able to consider all existing evidence, since some data and studies may not be publicly available. Including non-public studies in reviews provides a valuable opportunity to increase systematic review/map comprehensiveness, potentially mitigating negative impacts of publication bias. Studies may be non-public for many reasons: some may still be in the process of being published (publication can take a long time); some may not be published due to author/publisher restrictions; publication bias may make it difficult to publish non-significant or negative results. Here, we consider what forms these non-public studies may take and the implications of including them in systematic reviews and maps. Reviewers should carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of including non-public studies, weighing risks of bias against benefits of increased comprehensiveness. As with all systematic reviews and maps, reviewers must be transparent about methods used to obtain data and avoid risks of bias in their synthesis. We make tentative suggestions for reviewers in situations where non-public data may be present in an evidence base.

Conspiracy Beliefs and Knowledge About HIV Origins Among Adolescents in Soweto, South Africa

Purpose We examined adolescents’ knowledge regarding the origin of HIV/AIDS and correlates of beliefs surrounding conspiracy theories in Soweto, South Africa. Now, a decade post-AIDS denialism, South Africa has the largest antiretroviral therapy roll-out worldwide. However, conspiracy theories stemming from past AIDS denialism may impact HIV prevention and treatment efforts. Methods Study participants were recruited through the Kganya Motsha Adolescent Health Centre and the Perinatal HIV Research Unit’s Botsha Bophelo Adolescent Health Study (BBAHS). Adolescents were eligible to participate if aged 14–19 years and living in Soweto. We calculated the proportion of adolescents who correctly believed that HIV originated from non-human primates, and used contingency table analysis and logistic regression modeling to describe correlates associated with accurate knowledge and beliefs in conspiracy theories. Results Of 830 adolescents, 168 (20.2%) participants correctly identified HIV as originating from chimpanzees and one third (n = 71, 8.6%) believed in a conspiracy theory about the origins of HIV, including that it originated from the US government (2.3%), the pharmaceutical industry (2.2%), a vaccine (2.1%), space (1.5%), and a scientist (0.6%). Participants who were more likely to correctly identify the origin of HIV were older, men, and unemployed. Participants who were men, unemployed or students, and who had a parent or close relative who had died of HIV, were more likely to believe in a conspiracy theory regarding the origins of HIV. Conclusions Adolescents living in Soweto did not have high levels of accurate knowledge regarding the origins of HIV/AIDS and conspiracy beliefs were present among a small minority of participants. Accurate knowledge of the origins of HIV and debunking myths are important for improving uptake of HIV prevention tools in this population.

Ecological assessments of surface water bodies at the river basin level: a case study from England.

Ecological assessments of surface water bodies are essential in order to evaluate the level of degradation in freshwater ecosystems and to address the subsequent decline in services they provide. These assessments cover multiple aspects of the aquatic environment, particularly biological elements due to their ability to respond to all pressures within an ecosystem. Such assessments can enable the identification of the multiple pressures which threaten water bodies, facilitating sustainable decisions regarding their management to be identified. Here, the design requirements of the networks which facilitate ecological assessments are presented. A river basin district in England is used as a case study to investigate the number of elements monitored, the number of failing elements and the relationship between failing elements. Findings demonstrate the value of ensuring that monitoring networks are risk based and appropriately designed to meet their objectives. This therefore requires that monitoring is not only for the communicating of compliance but also for use iteratively so that the design of monitoring networks and ultimately management can be continually improved.

Timely delivery of scientific knowledge for environmental management: a Freshwater Science initiative

National Center for Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC 20460 USA Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia Centre for Evidence Informed Policy and Practice, Australia (https://ceipp.org.au/) Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra, Bruce, Australian Capital Territory, 2617 Australia Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College, London, SW7 1NA UK

Demystifying academics to enhance university–business collaborations in environmental science

In countries globally there is intense political interest in fostering effective university–business collaborations, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how an individual scientist’s workload (i.e. specified tasks) and incentive structures (i.e. assessment criteria) may act as a key barrier to this. To investigate this an original, empirical dataset is derived from UK job specifications and promotion criteria, which distil universities’ varied drivers into requirements upon academics. This work reveals the nature of the severe challenge posed by a heavily time-constrained culture; specifically, tension exists between opportunities presented by working with business and non-optional duties (e.g. administration and teaching). Thus, to justify the time to work with business, such work must inspire curiosity and facilitate future novel science in order to mitigate its conflict with the overriding imperative for academics to publish. It must also provide evidence of real-world changes (i.e. impact), and ideally other reportable outcomes (e.g. official status as a business’ advisor), to feed back into the scientist’s performance appraisals. Indicatively, amid 20–50 key duties, typical fullPublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 2 J. K. Hillier et al.: Demystifying academics to enhance university–business collaborations time scientists may be able to free up to 0.5 day per week for work with business. Thus specific, pragmatic actions, including short-term and time-efficient steps, are proposed in a “user guide” to help initiate and nurture a long-term collaboration between an earlyto mid-career environmental scientist and a practitioner in the insurance sector. These actions are mapped back to a tailored typology of impact and a newly created representative set of appraisal criteria to explain how they may be effective, mutually beneficial and overcome barriers. Throughout, the focus is on environmental science, with illustrative detail provided through the example of natural hazard risk modelling in the insurance sector. However, a new conceptual model of academics’ behaviour is developed, fusing perspectives from literature on academics’ motivations and performance assessment, which we propose is internationally applicable and transferable between sectors. Sector-specific details (e.g. list of relevant impacts and user guide) may serve as templates for how people may act differently to work more effectively together.