RefViz "real world" applications

March 12th, 2004 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

Something that strikes me about RefViz is that it is only useful for sorting particularly large databases of references. An “average” EndNote Library of, say, 250 records, can be searched and sorted pretty effectively by EndNote — No extraneous software is really needed.

However, for users with particularly large or complex databases, this little program might be quite useful. If you were conducting a systematic review, for example, and had searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Clinical Trials Registry, etc., you would likely have a very large database of records, only a handful of which would actually meet the criteria for your review. Previously, this record set would have to be culled by hand, a painstaking and labor-intensive process that can take hours or days to complete.

However, if you used RefViz for this activity, all references would be grouped by elements such as “clinical” or “trial” which could make this process much quicker. I’m beginning to look at how this might be done, specifically, and will report back on this soon.