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. 2022 Oct;7(10):e009378.
doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-009378.

Past, present and future of living systematic review: a bibliometrics analysis

Qingyong Zheng #  1   2 , Jianguo Xu #  2   3 , Ya Gao  2   3   4 , Ming Liu  2   3   4 , Luying Cheng  1   2   5 , Lu Xiong  6 , Jie Cheng  1 , Mengyuan Yuan  1 , Guoyuan OuYang  1 , Hengyi Huang  1 , Jiarui Wu  7 , Junhua Zhang  8 , Jinhui Tian  9   3
Affiliations

Past, present and future of living systematic review: a bibliometrics analysis

Qingyong Zheng et al. BMJ Glob Health. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Introduction: In recent years, the concept of living systematic review (LSR) has attracted the attention of many scholars and institutions. A growing number of studies have been conducted based on LSR methodology, but their focus direction is unclear. The objective of this study was to provide a comprehensive review of existing LSR-related studies and to analyse their whole picture and future trends with bibliometrics.

Methods: A comprehensive search strategy was used to construct a representative dataset of LSRs up to October 2021. GraphPad V.8.2.1 and Mindmaster Pro presented the basic information of the included studies and the timeline of LSR development, respectively. The author and country cooperation network, hotspot distribution clustering, historical citation network and future development trend prediction related to LSR were visualised by VOSviewer V.1.6.16 and R-Studio V.1.4.

Results: A total of 213 studies were eventually included. The concept of LSR was first proposed in 2014, and the number of studies has proliferated since 2020. There was a closer collaboration between author teams and more frequent LSR research development and collaboration in Europe, North America and Australia. Numerous LSR studies have been published in high-impact journals. COVID-19 is the predominant disease of concern at this stage, and the rehabilitation of its patients and virological studies are possible directions of research in LSR for a long time to come. A review of existing studies found that more than half of the LSR series had not yet been updated and that the method needed to be more standardised in practice.

Conclusion: Although LSR has a relatively short history, it has received much attention and currently has a high overall acceptance. The LSR methodology was further practised in COVID-19, and we look forward to seeing it applied in more areas.

Keywords: health systems; review; systematic review.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A timeline for the development of living systematic review. LNMA, living network meta-analysis; LSR, living systematic review.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Author collaboration network and cluster distribution.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Current situation of national research publications and cooperation.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Clustering distribution of keywords co-occurrence hot spot network. LSR, living systematic review.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Strategic distribution of living systematic review related research concerns.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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