High-performance automated abstract screening with large language model ensembles

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Sanghera, Rohan, Thirunavukarasu, Arun James, Khoury, Marc El, O'Logbon, Jessica, Chen, Yuqing, Watt, Archie, Mahmood, Mustafa, Butt, Hamid, Nishimura, George, Soltan, Andrew
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Sanghera, Rohan
Thirunavukarasu, Arun James
Khoury, Marc El
O'Logbon, Jessica
Chen, Yuqing
Watt, Archie
Mahmood, Mustafa
Butt, Hamid
Nishimura, George
Soltan, Andrew
author_facet Sanghera, Rohan
Thirunavukarasu, Arun James
Khoury, Marc El
O'Logbon, Jessica
Chen, Yuqing
Watt, Archie
Mahmood, Mustafa
Butt, Hamid
Nishimura, George
Soltan, Andrew
contents Large language models (LLMs) excel in tasks requiring processing and interpretation of input text. Abstract screening is a labour-intensive component of systematic review involving repetitive application of inclusion and exclusion criteria on a large volume of studies identified by a literature search. Here, LLMs (GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o, Llama 3 70B, Gemini 1.5 Pro, and Claude Sonnet 3.5) were trialled on systematic reviews in a full issue of the Cochrane Library to evaluate their accuracy in zero-shot binary classification for abstract screening. Trials over a subset of 800 records identified optimal prompting strategies and demonstrated superior performance of LLMs to human researchers in terms of sensitivity (LLM-max = 1.000, human-max = 0.775), precision (LLM-max = 0.927, human-max = 0.911), and balanced accuracy (LLM-max = 0.904, human-max = 0.865). The best performing LLM-prompt combinations were trialled across every replicated search result (n = 119,691), and exhibited consistent sensitivity (range 0.756-1.000) but diminished precision (range 0.004-0.096). 66 LLM-human and LLM-LLM ensembles exhibited perfect sensitivity with a maximal precision of 0.458, with less observed performance drop in larger trials. Significant variation in performance was observed between reviews, highlighting the importance of domain-specific validation before deployment. LLMs may reduce the human labour cost of systematic review with maintained or improved accuracy and sensitivity. Systematic review is the foundation of evidence synthesis across academic disciplines, including evidence-based medicine, and LLMs may increase the efficiency and quality of this mode of research.
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle High-performance automated abstract screening with large language model ensembles
Sanghera, Rohan
Thirunavukarasu, Arun James
Khoury, Marc El
O'Logbon, Jessica
Chen, Yuqing
Watt, Archie
Mahmood, Mustafa
Butt, Hamid
Nishimura, George
Soltan, Andrew
Computation and Language
Digital Libraries
Information Retrieval
Large language models (LLMs) excel in tasks requiring processing and interpretation of input text. Abstract screening is a labour-intensive component of systematic review involving repetitive application of inclusion and exclusion criteria on a large volume of studies identified by a literature search. Here, LLMs (GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4o, Llama 3 70B, Gemini 1.5 Pro, and Claude Sonnet 3.5) were trialled on systematic reviews in a full issue of the Cochrane Library to evaluate their accuracy in zero-shot binary classification for abstract screening. Trials over a subset of 800 records identified optimal prompting strategies and demonstrated superior performance of LLMs to human researchers in terms of sensitivity (LLM-max = 1.000, human-max = 0.775), precision (LLM-max = 0.927, human-max = 0.911), and balanced accuracy (LLM-max = 0.904, human-max = 0.865). The best performing LLM-prompt combinations were trialled across every replicated search result (n = 119,691), and exhibited consistent sensitivity (range 0.756-1.000) but diminished precision (range 0.004-0.096). 66 LLM-human and LLM-LLM ensembles exhibited perfect sensitivity with a maximal precision of 0.458, with less observed performance drop in larger trials. Significant variation in performance was observed between reviews, highlighting the importance of domain-specific validation before deployment. LLMs may reduce the human labour cost of systematic review with maintained or improved accuracy and sensitivity. Systematic review is the foundation of evidence synthesis across academic disciplines, including evidence-based medicine, and LLMs may increase the efficiency and quality of this mode of research.
title High-performance automated abstract screening with large language model ensembles
topic Computation and Language
Digital Libraries
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02451