Methological Quality of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses on Acupuncture for Stroke: A Review of Review

Objective： To assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses regarding acupuncture intervention for stroke and the primary studies within them. Methods： Two researchers searched Pub Med, Cumulative index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Embase, ISI Web of Knowledge, Cochrane, Allied and Complementary Medicine, Ovid Medline, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang and Traditional Chinese Medical Database to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses about acupuncture for stroke published from the inception to December 2016. Review characteristics and the criteria for assessing the primary studies within reviews were extracted. The methodological quality of the reviews was assessed using adapted Oxman and Guyatt Scale. The methodological quality of primary studies was also assessed. Results： Thirty-two eligible reviews were identified, 15 in English and 17 in Chinese. The English reviews were scored higher than the Chinese reviews（P=0.025）, especially in criteria for avoiding bias and the scope of search. All reviews used the quality criteria to evaluate the methodological quality of primary studies, but some criteria were not comprehensive. The primary studies, in particular the Chinese reviews, had problems with randomization, allocation concealment, blinding, dropouts and withdrawals, intent-to-treat analysis and adverse events. Conclusions： Important methodological flaws were found in Chinese systematic reviews and primary studies. It was necessary to improve the methodological quality and reporting quality of both the systematic reviews published in China and primary studies on acupuncture for stroke.

Reproducible Research Publication Workflow:A Canonical Workflow Framework and FAIR Digital Object Approach to Quality Research Output

In this paper we present the Reproducible Research Publication Workflow(RRPW)as an example of how generic canonical workflows can be applied to a specific context.The RRPW includes essential steps between submission and final publication of the manuscript and the research artefacts(i.e.,data,code,etc.)that underlie the scholarly claims in the manuscript.A key aspect of the RRPW is the inclusion of artefact review and metadata creation as part of the publication workflow.The paper discusses a formalized technical structure around a set of canonical steps which helps codify and standardize the process for researchers,curators,and publishers.The proposed application of canonical workflows can help achieve the goals of improved transparency and reproducibility,increase FAIR compliance of all research artefacts at all steps,and facilitate better exchange of annotated and machine-readable metadata.

A Review-Based Reputation Evaluation Approach for Web Services

Web services are commonly perceived as an environment of both offering opportunities and threats. In this environment, one way to minimize threats is to use reputation evaluation, which can be computed, for example, through transaction feedback. However, the current feedback-based approach is inaccurate and ineffective because of its inner limitations （e.g., feedback quality problem）. As the main source of feedback, the qualities of existing on-line reviews are often varied greatly from low to high, the main reasons include： （1） they have no standard expression formats, （2） dishonest comments may exist among these reviews due to malicious attacking. Up to present, the quality problem of review has not been well solved, which greatly degrades their importance on service reputation evaluation. Therefore, we firstly present a novel evaluation approach for review quality in terms of multiple metrics. Then, we make a further improvement in service reputation evaluation based on those filtered reviews. Experimental results show the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed approach compared with the naive feedback-based approaches.

A Systematic Review of RCTs and quasi-RCTs on Traditional Chinese Patent Medicines for Treatment of Chronic Hepatitis B

Traditional Chinese patent medicines (TCPMs) are widely used for treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) in China. To estimate the overall effectiveness of TCPMs for CHB, we performed a systematic review of clinical reports designed as randomized controlled trials (RCTs). One hundred and thirty-eight available RCTs and quasi-RCTs on 62 TCPMs, involving 16,393 patients, were included. The methodological quality of these trials was generally "poor". Few trials (6.52%) reported the methods of randomization correctly. Another common problem was the lack of allocation concealment, proper blinding, and the reporting of lost cases and dropouts. Forty-two trials (30.43%) on 27 TCPMs reported some anti-viral effect of TCPMs. Others reported beneficial aspects, including improvements of liver function (79.71% of the studies), liver fibrosis (29.99%), and CHB symptoms (92.75%). Forty-one articles (29.71%) reported mild adverse events with TCPMs but these occurred infrequently. In summary, the outcome of the report on currently registered TCPMs may be biased due to poor methodology. The data from these trials, therefore, is too weak to use in forming a recommendation for treatment of CHB. Nevertheless, five drugs (Dan Shen agents, Da Huang Zhe Chong pill/capsule, Shuang Hu Qing Gan granule, Fu Zheng Hua Yu granule and Cao Xian Yi Gan capsule) appear to be more effective than the other TCPMs.