Publishers and consumers of researcher expect a transparent, reproducible approach today. It is no longer enough to cite the works you consulted and compile them into a bibliography. It is just as important to document your approach to online research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You should consider your approach before you even begin. Waiting until you’re on your way makes it much harder for you later, and it slows you down — sometimes you cannot go back and reconstruct your search strategies because they changed iteratively over the course of many searches. Don’t let this happen to you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beginning in 2000, the Cochrane Organization recommended that specific search criteria be documented for every systematic review. The current edition of the Cochrane Handbook<\/a> acknowledges one other standard as equivalent to their own1<\/a><\/sup>: The PRISMA-S search standard (see More on PRISMA, below). Cochrane and PRISMA-S both require these pieces of information to consider an online search fully documented:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many publishers today require full documentation of the online search strategies so that (1) reviewers and others can confirm your sources, and (2) your literature search can be re-run at later dates to find new articles that have been published since your study. This makes the science transparent and reproducible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DGM Research & Consulting produces a PRISMA-S compliant statement fully documenting our searches for you to include with your manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are not familiar with PRISMA<\/a>, it is the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses<\/em>, the gold standard for documenting your research and structuring your manuscript. The PRISMA Extensions<\/a> (PRISMA-S<\/a>, PRISMA-P<\/a>, etc.) describe a set of minimum items to be included in all types of manuscripts. There are currently 16 PRISMA extensions, with another 13 extensions under development (as of 11 July 2025). These standards make the science transparent, and they allow others to repeat, reproduce, and replicate your experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This link will take you to the Protocols & Reporting Guidelines<\/a> section on the Resources page of our website. PRISMA-P is discussed as an option for structuring your own research protocol. PRISMA is discussed as an option for structuring your manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For transparency, your research should be repeatable, reproducible, and replicable.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n You repeat an experiment when you<\/em> conduct the same experiment multiple times using the same methods and the same data, and<\/em> under the same conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone else<\/em> follows your experimental setup using the same methods and under the same conditions, and they obtain the same results as you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone else <\/em>can reproduce your experiment when they conduct research using different methods and under different conditions. If other researchers can arrive at the same result through a different approach, your experiment is reproducible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Documentation is more than just a bibliography Publishers and consumers of researcher expect a transparent, reproducible approach today. It is no longer enough to cite the works you consulted and compile them into a bibliography. It is just as important to document your approach to online research. You should consider your approach before you even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":72,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"wp-custom-template-dgm-custom","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Lefebvre C, Glanville J, Briscoe S, et al. Chapter 4: Searching for and selecting studies<\/a> [last updated March 2025]. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, et al, eds. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions<\/em> <\/a>version 6.5.1. Cochrane; 2025. \",\"id\":\"0af5f372-6dca-4cdc-b4f6-9506610341a8\"},{\"content\":\"Plesser HE. Reproducibility vs. replicability: a brief history of a confused terminology. Front Neuroinform.<\/em> 2017;11:76. doi: 10.3389\/fninf.2017.00076<\/a>\",\"id\":\"52a84d57-2295-46d0-bb7c-3137d680c30a\"}]"},"class_list":["post-78","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions\/737"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dgmresearch.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n\n\n\nMore on PRISMA<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nTenets of Transparent Research<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Repeatable<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Replicable<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Reproducible<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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