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Introducing the Library of Guidance for Health Scientists (LIGHTS): a living database for methods guidance

Hirt, J. and Schönenberger, C. M. and Ewald, H. and Lawson, D. O. and Papola, D. and Rohner, R. and Suter, K. and Lin, S. and Germini, F. and Zeng, L. and Shahabinezhad, A. and Chowdhury, S. R. and Gao, Y. and Bhattacharjee, A. and Lima, J. P. and Marusic, A. and Buljan, I. and Agarwal, A. and Guyatt, G. H. and Briel, M. and Schandelmaier, S.. (2023) Introducing the Library of Guidance for Health Scientists (LIGHTS): a living database for methods guidance. JAMA Netw Open, 6 (2). e2253198.

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Abstract

IMPORTANCE: Improving methodological quality is a priority in the health research community. Finding appropriate methods guidance can be challenging due to heterogeneous terminology, poor indexing in medical databases, and variation in formats. The Library of Guidance for Health Scientists (LIGHTS) is a new searchable database for methods guidance articles. OBSERVATIONS: Journal articles that aim to provide guidance for performing (including planning, design, conduct, analysis, and interpretation), reporting, and assessing the quality of health-related research involving humans or human populations (ie, excluding basic and animal research) are eligible for LIGHTS. A team of health researchers, information specialists, and methodologists continuously identifies and manually indexes eligible guidance documents. The search strategy includes focused searches of specific journals, specialized databases, and suggestions from researchers. A current limitation is that a keyword-based search of MEDLINE (and other general databases) and manual screening of records were not feasible because of the large number of hits (n = 915 523). As of September 20, 2022, LIGHTS included 1246 articles (336 reporting guidelines, 80 quality assessment tools, and 830 other methods guidance articles). The LIGHTS website provides a user-oriented search interface including filters for study type, specific methodological topic, research context, guidance type, and development process of the guidance. Automated matching of alternative methodological expressions (eg, enter loss to follow-up and find articles indexed with missing data) enhances search queries. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: LIGHTS is a peer-supported initiative that is intended to increase access to and use of methods guidance relevant to health researchers, statisticians, methods consultants, methods developers, ethics boards, peer reviewers, journal editors, and funding bodies.
Faculties and Departments:09 Associated Institutions > Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH)
09 Associated Institutions > Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) > Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH) > Health Interventions > Malaria Interventions (Lengeler)
UniBasel Contributors:Bhattacharjee, Arunima
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
ISSN:2574-3805 (Electronic)2574-3805 (Linking)
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Language:English
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Last Modified:21 Feb 2023 15:02
Deposited On:21 Feb 2023 15:02

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