Whaley Paul, Roth Nicolas
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK; Evidence-Based Toxicology Collaboration at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA.
Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT), University of Basel, Missionsstrasse 64, 4055 Basel, Switzerland.
Environ Int. 2022 Dec;170:107543. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2022.107543. Epub 2022 Oct 6.
In 2016, Environment International became the first environmental health journal to adopt specialist policies for handling systematic review (SR) submissions. This included the appointment of a dedicated editor of SRs, the use of the CREST_Triage tool for transparent and consistent enforcement of editorial standards for SRs, the acceptance of SR protocols as full manuscripts, and the extension of SR handling policies to systematic evidence maps as a novel evidence synthesis methodology. Our data on triage decisions for SR submissions, gathered via CREST_Triage, indicates several ways in which researchers are challenged by SR methods, including problem formulation, critical appraisal methods, and certainty assessment. We recommend that author teams invest in developing protocols as a means to de-risk SR projects, arguing that the benefits outweigh the potential increase in time it may take to complete the research project. Finally, we present evidence that reliance among environmental health journals on informal peer-review and editorial checks for standards compliance and quality control is insufficient for ensuring the rigour of SR publications. This emphasises the importance of specialist editors using triage instruments for the effective enforcement of standards. Observing that Environment International appears to be one of few journals implementing effective quality control measures for SR publications, we suggest that adoption of our SR policies by other journals may be beneficial to the field at large.
2016年，《环境国际》成为第一本采用专门政策处理系统评价（SR）投稿的环境卫生期刊。这包括任命一位专门的系统评价编辑，使用CREST_Triage工具以透明且一致地执行系统评价的编辑标准，接受系统评价方案作为完整稿件，以及将系统评价处理政策扩展至系统证据图谱这一新型证据综合方法。我们通过CREST_Triage收集的关于系统评价投稿分诊决策的数据表明，研究人员在系统评价方法方面面临多种挑战，包括问题设定、批判性评价方法和确定性评估。我们建议作者团队投入精力制定方案，以此降低系统评价项目的风险，理由是其益处大于完成研究项目可能增加的时间成本。最后，我们提供证据表明，环境卫生期刊依靠非正式同行评审和编辑检查来确保标准合规和质量控制，不足以保证系统评价出版物的严谨性。这凸显了专业编辑使用分诊工具有效执行标准的重要性。鉴于《环境国际》似乎是少数几家对系统评价出版物实施有效质量控制措施的期刊之一，我们建议其他期刊采用我们的系统评价政策可能会对整个领域有益。
