Greetings to all,
Apologies for cross-posting.
The metaBUS team is pleased to announce the availability of a beta web interface (desktop version). **
The metaBUS beta interface allows flexible searches on a living database of ~800,0000 correlations relevant to applied psychology/HR/OB, in the near-term expanding to include every article in every issue of 23 journals (most from 1990 to 2015, some as far back as 1980) – and well beyond. metaBUS allows for nuanced, rapid location of findings (by text string or based on a hierarchical map of about 5,000 concepts in our field) and also first-pass meta-analyses on available concept pairs (e.g., job satisfaction with job performance). For a demonstration of the beta platform's enablements, please see our video tutorial. General project information is provided in the first issue of the new open-access journal Personnel Assessment and Decisions (see: http://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/pad/vol1/iss1).
**To request a beta account, please send an email to beta@metabus.org. Shortly thereafter, you will receive an email from "noreply@shinyapps.io" (that might go to your junk folder) with login information. In your email request, please include an email signature containing your name, affiliation, and email address you would like to have associated with your metaBUS beta account. By requesting a beta account, you join our email list (however, you may opt-out at any time by emailing beta@metabus.org).
In return for accessing our beta platform, we are eager to receive feedback to improve:
(1) overall usability of the system (the interface, the experience);
(2) database/query/technical features;
(3) analysis features (note that we are currently adding publication bias, moderation analyses, and "exploratory" meta-analyses wherein only one concept is defined);
(4) database expansion; and
(5) anything else!
The intention of the beta version of metaBUS is to provide a 'sandbox' for researchers everywhere in our field to build and advance open science for meta-analyses collaboratively. Your feedback and efforts will help the entire community using the platform.
Note that there are some current limitations on the size of the analysis that may be conducted, but they can still be quite large (i.e., < 2,000 effects). Additionally, at this point, the effect of many simultaneous users using the platform is unknown. We ask for your patience if there are hiccups during our beta launch. Address all comments/suggestions on your experience with metaBUS to: feedback@metaBUS.org.
Following the beta version, our release version (to be available summer 2016) will contain many added features, including (1) user accounts that allow saving, sharing, updating, and public posting; (2) additional analytic features, including moderator analyses, publication bias analyses, time lag bias analyses; (3) a large-scale network analysis that visualizes the frequency and magnitude of relationships; and (4) a host of other add-ons. Stay tuned!
For additional information, feel free to visit our upcoming SIOP presentation (8:30am, Saturday, April 16, room 207B).
Sincerely,
The metaBUS team (http://metabus.org/about-us)
Notes.
1. This work would not have been possible without grant support from:
-Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership in Business
-Digging into Data Challenge (National Endowment for the Humanities)
-National Science Foundation
-SHRM Foundation
-Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
-Virginia Commonwealth University Presidential Research Quest Fund
2. Building the metaBUS project has required a tremendous team effort. Towards our vision of accelerating the speed and collaboration of science in our discipline, the metaBUS project would not be where it is today without the commitment, coding, and insights from metaBUS core team, academic advisors, and graduate student coding team. Many thanks to all of you for bringing the metaBUS project to life!
3. metaBUS beta is a search engine. Search engines are often imperfect and return irrelevant results / omit relevant ones. Although some large queries (e.g., 'job satisfaction' with 'performance,' conducted as a taxonomy-based query [i.e., 20072 with 30031]) return results strikingly similar to existing systematic reviews, please note that metaBUS summaries are incomplete.
4. The metaBUS beta platform relies on a shinyapps.io instance running R Statistics, the R package metafor (Viechtbauer, 2010; multi-level meta-analysis with effects nested as: article/sample/effect and REML estimation), a bootstrap-based, dashboard-like GUI created in RStudio Shiny, and a MongoDB database hosted at Amazon Web Services. Our release version (currently under development to be available summer 2016) will contain many added features, including (1) user accounts that allow saving, sharing, updating, and public posting; (2) additional analytic features, including moderator, publication bias, and time lag bias analyses; and (3) a host of other add-ons.