Although the documents were subjected to a quality assessment, all eligible documents were included in the review, regardless of the results of that assessment (Additional file 1).
The appraisal followed the guidelines of the modified Newcastle Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale (NOS) documents.
Two reviewers (HA and IAR or JS) assessed the quality of the trials using criteria and decision rules modified from Van Tulder et al [ 33] (see Additional file 2, Word document: Quality assessment criteria and decision rules).
Through analyses of the relevant retrieved documents, a quality assessment of keyword choice is provided, as well as determining focused IPC and Derwent Manual classification codes and terminology from original patent and Derwent documentation abstract titles.
The free answers were transcribed word for word by the researchers to ensure they could be documented accurately during quality assessment of the interviews.
Studies did well on a number of quality assessment questions including having clear objectives, documenting selection criteria, providing a representative sample, defining interventions/characteristics under study, defining and using appropriate outcomes, describing results clearly and using appropriate statistical tests.
The studies in general did well on a number of quality assessment questions including having clear objectives, documenting selection criteria, providing a representative sample, defining interventions/characteristics under study, defining and using appropriate outcomes, describing results clearly and using appropriate statistical tests (where described).
43 45 Further, these coding definitions could be used for quality assessment surveillance monitoring studies, for example, to document the rapidity of administration of antibiotics.
No quality assessment was undertaken for policy and guidance documents.
We resolved differences in quality assessment through joint discussion and review of the source document.
As the results for the quality assessment are presented in detail in Table 3 and in the additional documents only some notable results are described in the following.
