Methods and systems to estimate recall while screening an ordered list of bibliographic references

摘要

Methods and systems for estimating recall while screening an ordered list of bibliographic references are provided. According to one embodiment, a method includes: sorting a list of bibliographic references according to a sorting algorithm to produce a first list in order from most to least relevant; selecting, from the list, the most relevant reference, and displaying, to a human screener, information associated with the selected reference; and receiving the screener's judgment of the relevance of the selected reference. If sufficiently relevant, the selected reference is moved from the first list to a second list. The received indication is used to re-sort the remaining references in the first list. A statistical model is used to estimate the number of relevant references remaining. That estimate is displayed to the screener. The process ends when the screener determines, based on the displayed estimate, that a sufficient number of relevant references has been found.