Need Ability to Rename the Literature Search#460

Can you please reconsider a request I made (not in Nolt because I can’t find it) to add the ability to rename a Literature search after it was entered.
We sometimes make typos in the name that are problematic, and we are forced to delete the existing Literature Search/es and redo the steps to re-import. If we’re rushing sometimes we have to do it multiple times.
Today I discovered that I typed the incorrect name yesterday (the highlighted entry in the attachment should say 220208 Excluded instead of 220209) and it’s too late for me to delete and re-import because the analyst has already started screening.
If I’m remembering correctly this request was discouraged because it was felt it could cause a problem with an audit trail (maybe I’m mis-remembering), but now we have an incorrect trail because the wrong name is listed (see attachement). Thanks for reconsidering!

Happy to Michele! We have not been pragmatic on this request, in the past. A review is only as good as the researchers’ protocol & their adherence to it, and most rules we create don’t actually make it impossible to do bad things (just harder). So, in that light, we’re being unnecessarily hard-line. The consideration is: is NK over-burdening users with sound protocols, who just made a mistake, in the name of preventing users with flawed practices from reducing reproducibility of their research.

I think this issue is especially problematic for ECRI, because you’re using exclusively file imports. With API-based searches, modifying a search is nearly always going to produce an incorrect accounting of searches. Maybe we can account for this in a solution.

I will note, it’s a viable option to re-import & delete (opposite order mentioned). If the file is the same, this will maintain all records & screening / gathered data from the previously imported records.

I’m going to make another request for this with additional information. What I’m asking is not to modify counts or a record of what was done or imported. I just want to be able to rename the Query when I make a typo. Right now we have a certain naming convention that shows the month and year, the word included or excluded, and sometimes additional info about the results set (for example, “SRs” or “RCT”s). We are always in a hurry, overworked, and tired. It’s so easy to make typos in the name and then have to hit the delete can and begin all over again filling in all the boxes on the import screen, reselecting the file, etc. I’m asking to be able to correct typos in the Literature Search query name from say “20234 Inluded RCCs” to “202305 Included RCTs” to fix typos. I’m trying to picture how these types of changes would modify a search or result in flawed practices and it’s hard to picture. So I’m just going to make one more plug for this ability and then I’ll just drop it. Thanks for considering just once more.

I’m trying to picture how these types of changes would modify a search or result in flawed practices and it’s hard to picture

The hang up is that users may not consider what will happen “under the hood” when editing a search that runs against API. Consider I have PubMed API search kevin kallmes [au] AND (2000:2020[pdat]) which retrieves 16 results. Shortly after, I realize that I took the wrong date range, and I edit the search to kevin kallmes [au] AND (2020:2022[pdat]). I rerun the search and get 29 results back. My nest will now have 43 total records (due to overlap between the two searches), I will have 14 records which I really did not want in my nest, and no audit trail of how they got there (because the original query was overwritten).

A more treacherous scenario is when a user has an automatically recurring search, and they make a spot edit which retrieves wildly different results, but they don’t notice that upon edit & only find out the impacts weeks to months later, seemingly without cause.

So, we could offer editing for only file-based searches, but then we have a half-feature, which could increase user confusion.

I don’t want to remove your & our users’ agency, and your use case is legitimate. And certainly if a user wants to sabotage the reproducibility of their review, they are more than capable of doing so with or without the ability to edit queries. But I don’t want sabotage to occur as a mistake!

I’m asking to be able to correct typos in the Literature Search query name from say “20234 Inluded RCCs” to “202305 Included RCTs” to fix typos

Perhaps part of the conflict here is that that’s not actually the query you are using. That’s a human-readable label for the search + some post-screening in a separate software. We’d typically expect information like this to be entered in the Notes section (which is editable).