Still a filtering failure? A follow-up commentary on automated MeSH indexing.

Authors

Nicole Askin, Tyler Ostapyk, Carla Epp

Published in

Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA. Volume 114. Issue 4. Pages 508-511. Oct 01, 2026. Epub Oct 14, 2026.

Abstract

We previously found that automated indexing in PubMed and Medline increased the risk of inappropriately excluding human studies when using the human studies filter from the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS). Following the National Library of Medicine's transition from the Medical Text Indexer-Auto (MTIA) to the Medical Text Indexer-Next Generation (MTIX) in 2024, we wanted to assess whether that was still the case. Using the same approach as our previous study, we reviewed a set of MTIX-indexed records that were excluded by the HSSS. Only 1.1% turned out to be human studies that were inappropriately excluded - a major improvement over not only MTIA but also human indexers in our previous comparison. However, problems remain with automated indexing and search filters. This commentary outlines our findings and our ongoing concerns.

PMID:
42889856
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Oct 2026.

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