synthesisr {synthesisr}

synthesisr: Import, assemble, and deduplicate bibiliographic datasets

Description

Systematic review searches include multiple databases that export results in a variety of formats with overlap in coverage between databases. To streamline the process of importing, assembling, and deduplicating results, synthesisr recognizes bibliographic files exported from databases commonly used for systematic reviews and merges results into a standardized format.

Import & Export

The key task performed by synthesisr is flexible import and presentation of bibliographic data. This is typically achieved by read_refs, which can import multiple files at once and link them together into a single data.frame. Conversely, export is via write_refs. Users that require more detailed control can use the following functions:

• detect_ Detect file attributes

• parse_ Parse a vector containing bibliographic data

• clean_ Cleaning functions for author and column names

• code_lookup A dataset of potential ris tags

Data formatting

• bibliography-class Methods for class 'bibliography'

• merge_columns rbind two data.frames with different numbers of columns

• format_citation Return a clean citation from a bibliography or data.frame

• add_line_breaks Set a maximum character width for strings

Deduplication

When importing from multiple databases, it is likely that there will be duplicates in the resulting dataset. The easiest way to deal with this problem in synthesisr is using the deduplicate command; but this can be risky, particularly if there are no DOIs in the dataset. To get finer control of the deduplication process, consider using the sub-functions:

• find_duplicates Locate potentially duplicated references

• extract_unique_references Return a data.frame with only 'unique' references

• review_duplicates Manually review potential duplicates

• override_duplicates Manually override identified duplicates

• fuzz_ Fuzzy string matching c/o 'fuzzywuzzy'

• string_ Fuzzy string matching c/o stringdist