Big data and systematic reviews in nutritional epidemiology

A suggestion for quality assessment in systematic reviews of observational studies in nutritional epidemiology

OBJECTIVES It is important to control the quality level of the observational studies in conducting meta-analyses. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) is a representative tool used for this purpose. We investigated the relationship between high-quality (HQ) defined using NOS and the results of subgroup analysis according to study design. METHODS We selected systematic review studies with meta-ana...

Epidemiology and Reporting Characteristics of Systematic Reviews

BACKGROUND Systematic reviews (SRs) have become increasingly popular to a wide range of stakeholders. We set out to capture a representative cross-sectional sample of published SRs and examine them in terms of a broad range of epidemiological, descriptive, and reporting characteristics, including emerging aspects not previously examined. METHODS AND FINDINGS We searched Medline for SRs indexe...

Worldwide inequality in production of systematic reviews

Background: Investment in science is vital for the development and well-being of societies. This study aims to assess the scientific productivity of countries by quantifying their publication of systematic reviews taking the gross national income per capita (GNIPC) into account. Methods: Medline and ISI Web of Science were searched for systematic reviews published between 1st January 2006 an...

Privacy and Security of Big Data in THE Cloud

Big data has been arising a growing interest in both scien- tific and industrial fields for its potential value. However, before employing big data technology into massive appli- cations, a basic but also principle topic should be investigated: security and privacy. One of the biggest concerns of big data is privacy. However, the study on big data privacy is still at a very early stage. Many or...

Systematic reviews in epidemiology: why are we so far behind?