medrxivr - Explore health-related preprints - 2020 Shiny Contest Submission

medrxivr - Explore health-related preprints

Authors: Luke McGuinness
Working with Shiny more than 1 year

Abstract: This app provides a user-friendly interface to the {medrxivr} R package, which allows users to search for and download information on preprints of health-related research articles hosted by the medRxiv preprint repository.

Full Description: Preprints are full drafts of research papers that are shared publicly before they have undergone peer-review, the quality control process where other academics are invited to critically assess the paper and point out flaws/mistakes that may affect its results. The medRxiv preprint repository hosts preprints in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences, and represents a key source of information for those performing a systematic review - a type of study that aims to find, assess and combine all available knowledge to answer a pressing research question - on a health-related topic.

It is important to remember that preprints should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

This app is designed to allow systematic reviewers to use complex queries, including regular expression syntax and Boolean operators, to search a daily snapshot of the medRxiv repository and download information on preprints related to their research question, something that is currently not possible via the official medRxiv website. Example searches are provided for reference, and a detailed help section is available to aid in building your search. Search results are returned as a table and are available for easy download as a comma seperated file (CSV). Graphics describing your search results are also presented (see screenshot). Finally, as this app is designed to be a companion to the medrxivr R package, the code used to perform your search straight from R is provided, making it readily reproducible.


Category: Healthcare
Keywords: citation management, bibliographic, visualisation, research tool, systematic review
Shiny app: https://mcguinlu.shinyapps.io/medrxivr/
Repo: GitHub - ropensci/medrxivr: Access and search medRxiv and bioRxiv preprint data
RStudio Cloud: Posit Cloud

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