Diverse efforts are underway to reform the journal peer review system. Combined with growing interest in Open Science practices, Open Peer Review (OPR) has become of central concern to the scholarly community. However, what OPR is understood to encompass and how effective some of its elements are in meeting the expectations of diverse communities,…

Background: A systematic review is a secondary research method that follows a predetermined protocol to identify, synthesize, and assess the quality of primary studies that meet pre-established eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question (Higgins & Green, 2011; Higgins & Thomas, 2019). It uses systematic and transparent…

Introduction: Concerns about the risk of bias (RoB) of Meta-analysis (MAs) have grown in parallel with the exponential increase in the number of publications in science. However, this has not been properly assessed in Education. The aims were to evaluate the RoB of MAs in Education and to identify potential predictors of a lower RoB. Methods:…

Publishing systematic review protocols is a fundamental part of systematic reviews to ensure transparency and reproducibility. In this scoping review, we aimed to evaluate reporting of Cochrane systematic review protocols with network meta-analyses (NMA). We searched all Cochrane NMA protocols published in 2018 and 2019, and assessed the…

Multiple 'overviews of reviews' conducted on the same topic ("overlapping overviews") represent a waste of research resources and can confuse clinicians making decisions amongst competing treatments. We aimed to assess the frequency and characteristics of overlapping overviews. MEDLINE, Epistemonikos and Cochrane Database of Systematic…

Meta-analysis methodology has evolved with the development of more robust statistical techniques; however, few reviews in special education have focused specifically on methodological rigor in meta-analyses. In this study, we examined 29 meta-analyses of mathematics interventions published from 2000 to 2022 to determine the extent to which…

Purpose: This article argues that the potential of the vast amount of research, published each year in the history of education, remains untapped. Given the rapidly growing number of academic publications in the field, there is a need for research that is based on articles, chapters and monographs already published. While analyses of existing…

Longitudinal studies provide developmental science with invaluable information about how variables and the associations between variables change across time, but typically give limited attention to the length of time over which that change occurs. The present study re-analyzed data from previously published meta-analyses of longitudinal data…

Background: Searching the literature and screening studies are two key stages to build a strong foundation for a quality systematic review. Low-quality handsearching and citation chasing processes may lead to missing relevant studies, while low-quality study screening may lead to human errors and a lengthy process (Haddaway et al., 2022; Zhang…

Background: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of interventions can provide critical evidence for educators and policymakers by providing insights into the effectiveness of related interventions. The quality of included studies builds the foundation for a high-quality review, while bias in the included studies increases the risks of unreliable…

High-quality systematic literature reviews provide a systematic process for identifying, synthesizing, and critiquing multiple studies and, in turn, inform theory, research, practice, and policy. With a focus on special education systematic reviews, we propose four core principles (i.e., coherence, contextualization, generativity, and…

Data for individual trials included in systematic reviews may be available in multiple sources. For example, a single trial might be reported in 2 journal articles and 3 conference abstracts. Because of differences across sources, source selection can influence the results of systematic reviews. We used our experience in the Multiple Data Sources…

Systematic reviews often encounter primary studies that report multiple effect sizes based on data from the same participants. These have the potential to introduce statistical dependency into the meta-analytic data set. In this paper, we provide a tutorial on dealing with effect size multiplicity within studies in the context of meta-analyses of…

A third level of educational research is emerging, in addition to original research and secondary-level reviews. Whereas most third-level research syntheses focus on rather restricted topical areas, this study introduces a comparative and integrative overview of prominent second-order research on teaching, including many different types of reviews…

Most social communication tests used to measure change in young children with autism spectrum disorder have not undergone rigorous psychometric evaluation. Notably, and most relevant to the early intervention literature, there is little information on the sensitivity of these measures to change over time, despite their frequent use. Further, most…