Institute for Ethics, History and Philosophy of Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, 30625, Hannover, Germany.
Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital, University of Cologne, Joseph-Stelzmann-Str. 20, Geb. 42, 50931, Cologne, Germany.
Syst Rev. 2023 Sep 23;12(1):173. doi: 10.1186/s13643-023-02341-y.
Systematic reviews of ethical literature (SREL) aim at providing an overview of ethical issues, arguments, or concepts on a specific ethical topic. As SREL are becoming more common, their methodology and possible impact are increasingly subjected to critical considerations. Because they analyse and synthetise normative literature, SREL are likely to be used differently than typical systematic reviews. Still, the uses and the expected purposes of SREL were, to date, mainly theoretically discussed. Our explorative study aimed at gaining preliminary empirical insights into the actual uses of SREL.
Citations of SREL in publications, both scientific and non-scientific, were taken as proxy for SREL uses. The citations of 31 published SREL were systematically searched on Google Scholar. Each citation was qualitatively analysed to determine its function. The resulting categorisation of SREL citations was further quantitatively investigated to unveil possible trends.
The analysis of the resulting sample of SREL citations (n=1812) showed that the selected SREL were mostly cited to support claims about ethical issues, arguments, or concepts, but also to merely mention the existence of literature on a given topic. In this sample, SREL were cited predominantly within empirical publications in journals from various academic fields, indicating a broad, field-independent use of such systematic reviews. The selected SREL were also used as methodological orientations either for the conduct of SREL or for the practical and ethically sensitive conduct of empirical studies.
In our sample, SREL were rarely used to develop guidelines or to derive ethical recommendations, as it is often postulated in the theoretical literature. The findings of this study constitute a valuable preliminary empirical input in the current methodological debate on SREL and could contribute to developing strategies to align expected purposes with actual uses of SREL.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13643-023-02341-y.
系统评价伦理文献（SREL）旨在提供关于特定伦理主题的伦理问题、论点或概念的概述。随着 SREL 的日益普及，其方法和可能的影响越来越受到批判性的考虑。由于它们分析和综合规范文献，因此 SREL 的使用方式可能与典型的系统评价不同。然而，到目前为止，SREL 的用途和预期目的主要是从理论上讨论的。我们的探索性研究旨在初步获得关于 SREL 实际用途的经验性见解。
将 SREL 在科学和非科学出版物中的引用作为 SREL 使用的代理。系统地在 Google Scholar 上搜索了 31 篇已发表的 SREL 的引用。对每个引用进行定性分析，以确定其功能。进一步对分类后的 SREL 引用进行定量研究，以揭示可能的趋势。
对所选 SREL 引用的样本（n=1812）进行分析表明，所选 SREL 主要被引用以支持关于伦理问题、论点或概念的主张，但也只是提及给定主题的文献存在。在这个样本中，SREL 主要被引用在来自各个学术领域的期刊中的实证出版物中，这表明这种系统评价的广泛、独立于领域的使用。所选 SREL 还被用作方法学方向，无论是用于进行 SREL 还是用于进行实证研究的实践和伦理敏感的研究。
在我们的样本中，SREL 很少被用于制定指南或得出伦理建议，正如理论文献中经常假设的那样。这项研究的结果为当前关于 SREL 的方法论辩论提供了有价值的初步经验性输入，并有助于制定策略，使预期目的与 SREL 的实际用途保持一致。
在线版本包含补充材料，可在 10.1186/s13643-023-02341-y 获得。
