# Meta-analysis 2.0.0-rc1 — 15 October 2026

Package license: **Nexitia Skill License 1.1 + third-party licenses**. The license applies to the
Nexitia-controlled material identified in RIGHTS.json: the skill text (SKILL.md, references/), the Python
and R scripts, templates, tests, benchmark documents and synthetic fixtures. Third-party material keeps its
own terms, listed below and per file in RIGHTS.json. Edition 1.0.0 (13 October 2026) was the first
distribution of this material under the same license; this release candidate succeeds it and preserves its
grant history (see GRANT-HISTORY in the release dossier).

This is an owner-authorized, AI-assisted preparation. No independent human statistical review, clinical
certification or legal-counsel review is claimed. Benchmark figures describe what was measured on the named
reviews and nothing beyond it. **Release candidate:** the edition-2.0.0 acceptance contract's release gate has
not been passed; `benchmark/v2/BENCHMARK_V2_RECORD.md` states which thresholds have been met.

## Third-party data redistributed in `fixtures/` (unchanged, with attribution)

- `fixtures/CD010216_data_package/CD010216-SUP-07-dataPackage.zip` — RevMan Web data package of
  Lindson N, Livingstone-Banks J, Butler AR, et al. *Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation.*
  Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2025, Issue 11, CD010216.pub10, DOI 10.1002/14651858.CD010216.pub10.
  Obtained from PubMed Central (PMC12599494) supplementary material. Licence: Creative Commons
  Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), as stated in the article's licence block. Copyright © 2025
  The Authors / The Cochrane Collaboration, published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Redistributed unchanged.
- `fixtures/CD015156_data_package/CD015156-SUP-07-dataPackage.zip` — RevMan Web data package of
  Williams CM, Krommes K, Paterson KL, Haines T, Caserta A, Thorborg K. *Non-surgical treatment for
  lower limb apophyseal injuries.* Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2026, CD015156.pub2,
  DOI 10.1002/14651858.CD015156.pub2. PMC13370774 supplementary material. CC BY 4.0. Redistributed unchanged.
- `fixtures/MR000013.pub7_data_package/MR000013-SUP-05-dataPackage.zip` — RevMan Web data package of
  Parker A, Mongelli G, Piccolo-Lawrance C, et al. *Strategies to improve recruitment to randomised
  trials.* Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2026, MR000013.pub7, DOI 10.1002/14651858.MR000013.pub7.
  PMC13576036 supplementary material 5. CC BY 4.0. Redistributed unchanged.

The CC BY 4.0 legal code is included as `licenses/CC-BY-4.0.txt`. Each fixture folder carries its own
NOTICE.md with the same attribution. Cochrane and the review authors do not endorse this package.
The packages are used as reproduction oracles; the review texts are not included.

## Published trial data transcribed as test inputs (facts, cited)

- `fixtures/bcg_colditz1994.csv` — the 13 BCG vaccine trials tabulated by Colditz GA et al., JAMA 1994;271:698-702,
  as distributed in the R package `metadat` (`dat.bcg`); published REML values from Viechtbauer W, J Stat Softw 2010;36(3).
- `fixtures/senn2013_network.csv` — the 26-study glucose-lowering network of Senn S et al., Stat Methods Med Res 2013;22:169-189,
  as distributed in the R package `netmeta` (`Senn2013`).
- Tests also read, at run time and from the user's own R installation, `meta`'s bundled `Fleiss1993.rm5` and `gemtc`'s `smoking`
  dataset (Lu G, Ades AE, J Am Stat Assoc 2006;101:447-459). Those files are not included in this package.
- The regression tests of the review stages (`tests/test_v2.py`) use synthetic records and short invented sentences; no
  text of any benchmark review is included in the tests or fixtures.

## Benchmark reviews named in the benchmark documents (not redistributed)

`benchmark/v2/` names the six Cochrane reviews used to develop edition 2.0.0 (Interventions for quitting vaping,
CD016058.pub2, CC BY 4.0; Oral nicotine pouches, CD016220.pub2; Riboflavin supplements for blood pressure lowering,
CD015464.pub2; Vitamin E for people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, CD015033.pub2; Tranexamic acid for
preventing postpartum haemorrhage after caesarean section, CD016278; Typhoid conjugate vaccines, CD015746.pub2; the
last five CC BY-NC) with their DOIs, as facts, and reports agreement statistics between the skill's output and each
review. The iteration log quotes at most short phrases of those reviews when it explains a judge's label. No review
text, data package or protocol text of a CC BY-NC review is included in this package.

## Online services the review-stage scripts call (no code or data of theirs is bundled)

`search_run.py`, `mesh_lookup.py`, `citation_chase.py` and `fulltext_fetch.py` query, at the user's request and
under each service's published terms: NCBI E-utilities (PubMed, MeSH) and the NCBI BioC API for PubMed Central
(open-access subset and author manuscript dataset, offered for text mining), Europe PMC REST services,
ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, and OpenAlex (open-access locations). The scripts log every request, apply the
review's date limit and a blocklist for the review being replicated, and never attempt paywalled or
bot-protected routes; the Cochrane Library is not queried. Users are responsible for their own use of these services.

## Software dependencies (installed by the user; not bundled)

R ≥ 4.3 with `meta` (GPL ≥ 2), `metafor` (GPL ≥ 2), `netmeta` (GPL ≥ 2), `bayesmeta` (GPL ≥ 2), `jsonlite` (MIT),
`ggplot2` (MIT); optional `gemtc` (GPL-3), `rjags` (GPL-2) and the JAGS program (GPL-2) for Bayesian network meta-analysis;
optional `pdftotext` (poppler, GPL-2) for open-access PDFs in `fulltext_fetch.py`. Python 3.10 standard library only.
The qualification environment is recorded in the release dossier (`dependencies/runtime-dependencies.json`). No
dependency source or binary is included, and the GPL terms of those packages are not altered by this license.

## Methods and standards referenced

The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, RevMan 5 and RevMan Web documentation, the GRADE
handbook, PRISMA 2020, PRISMA-S, SWiM and MECIR are cited as published methods. Short method descriptions in
`references/` are written by the skill authors; they do not reproduce the Handbook text. "Cochrane", "RevMan" and
"GRADE" are the marks of their owners and are used only to identify the methods and formats the skill implements.