{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0296611","title":"Automated self-service cohort selection for large-scale population sciences and observational research: The California Teachers Study researcher platform","abstract":"<jats:sec id=\"sec018\">\n                    <jats:title>Objective</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Cohort selection is ubiquitous and essential, but manual and ad hoc approaches are time-consuming, labor-intense, and difficult to scale. We sought to automate the task of cohort selection by building self-service tools that enable researchers to independently generate datasets for population sciences research.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec id=\"sec019\">\n                    <jats:title>Materials and Methods</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The California Teachers Study (CTS) is a prospective observational study of 133,477 women who have been followed continuously since 1995. The CTS includes extensive survey-based and real-world data from cancer, hospitalization, and mortality linkages. We curated data from our data warehouse into a column-oriented database and developed a researcher-facing web application that guides researchers through the project lifecycle; captures researchers’ inputs; and automatically generates custom and analysis-ready data, code, dictionaries, and documentation.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec id=\"sec020\">\n                    <jats:title>Results</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Researchers can register, access data, and propose projects on the CTS Researcher Platform via our CTS website. The Platform supports cohort and cross-sectional study designs for cancer, mortality, and any other ICD-based phenotypes or endpoints. User-friendly prompts and menus capture analytic design, inclusion/exclusion criteria, endpoint definitions, censoring rules, and covariate selection. Our platform empowers researchers everywhere to query, choose, review, and automatically and quickly receive custom data, analytic scripts, and documentation for their research projects. Research teams can review, revise, and update their choices anytime.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec id=\"sec021\">\n                    <jats:title>Discussion</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>We replaced inefficient traditional cohort-selection processes with an integrated self-service approach that simplifies and improves cohort selection for all stakeholders. Compared with manual methods, our solution is faster and more scalable, user-friendly, and collaborative. Other studies could re-configure our individual database, project-tracking, website, and data-delivery components for their own specific needs, or they could utilize other widely available solutions (e.g., alternative database or project-tracking tools) to enable similarly automated cohort-selection in their own settings. Our comprehensive and flexible framework could be adopted to improve cohort selection in other population sciences and observational research settings.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>","journal":"PLOS One","year":2025,"id":675572,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":1,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":386152,"name":"Emma S. Spielfogel","orcid":"0000-0002-9006-239X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":386845,"name":"Jennifer L. Benbow","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":386844,"name":"Kristen E. Savage","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":831083,"name":"Kai Lin","orcid":"0000-0003-2186-7466","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1765156,"name":"Cheryl A. M. Anderson","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":685267,"name":"Jessica Clague DeHart","orcid":"0000-0002-2298-3146","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1765157,"name":"Christine N. Duffy","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":306375,"name":"Maria Elena Martinez","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1083425,"name":"Hannah Lui Park","orcid":"0000-0001-9973-1396","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":462065,"name":"Caroline A. Thompson","orcid":"0000-0001-9990-9756","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1765158,"name":"Sophia S. Wang","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":478271,"name":"Sandeep Chandra","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":104605,"name":"James V. Lacey","orcid":"0000-0002-4560-8592","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Automated self-service cohort selection for large-scale population sciences and observational research: The California Teachers Study researcher platform","abstract":"<jats:sec id=\"sec018\">\n                    <jats:title>Objective</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Cohort selection is ubiquitous and essential, but manual and ad hoc approaches are time-consuming, labor-intense, and difficult to scale. We sought to automate the task of cohort selection by building self-service tools that enable researchers to independently generate datasets for population sciences research.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec id=\"sec019\">\n                    <jats:title>Materials and Methods</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The California Teachers Study (CTS) is a prospective observational study of 133,477 women who have been followed continuously since 1995. The CTS includes extensive survey-based and real-world data from cancer, hospitalization, and mortality linkages. We curated data from our data warehouse into a column-oriented database and developed a researcher-facing web application that guides researchers through the project lifecycle; captures researchers’ inputs; and automatically generates custom and analysis-ready data, code, dictionaries, and documentation.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec id=\"sec020\">\n                    <jats:title>Results</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Researchers can register, access data, and propose projects on the CTS Researcher Platform via our CTS website. The Platform supports cohort and cross-sectional study designs for cancer, mortality, and any other ICD-based phenotypes or endpoints. User-friendly prompts and menus capture analytic design, inclusion/exclusion criteria, endpoint definitions, censoring rules, and covariate selection. Our platform empowers researchers everywhere to query, choose, review, and automatically and quickly receive custom data, analytic scripts, and documentation for their research projects. Research teams can review, revise, and update their choices anytime.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec id=\"sec021\">\n                    <jats:title>Discussion</jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>We replaced inefficient traditional cohort-selection processes with an integrated self-service approach that simplifies and improves cohort selection for all stakeholders. Compared with manual methods, our solution is faster and more scalable, user-friendly, and collaborative. Other studies could re-configure our individual database, project-tracking, website, and data-delivery components for their own specific needs, or they could utilize other widely available solutions (e.g., alternative database or project-tracking tools) to enable similarly automated cohort-selection in their own settings. Our comprehensive and flexible framework could be adopted to improve cohort selection in other population sciences and observational research settings.</jats:p>\n                  </jats:sec>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"40354347","pmcid":"PMC12068635","openalex_id":null,"authors":[],"funders":[{"funder_name":"National Cancer Institute","grant_id":"UM1-CA164917","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Cancer Institute","grant_id":"U01-CA199277","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Cancer Institute","grant_id":"R01-CA077398","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Cancer Institute","grant_id":"P30-CA033572","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Cancer Institute","grant_id":"P30-CA023100","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"U01 CA199277","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"HHSN261201800009I","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"HHSN261201800032C","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"HHSN261201800015I","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCCDPHP CDC HHS","grant_id":"NU58DP006344","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"HHSN261201800009C","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"R01 CA077398","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"UM1 CA164917","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"HHSN261201800015C","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"HHSN261201800032I","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"P30 CA023100","title":null},{"funder_name":"NCI NIH HHS","grant_id":"P30 CA033572","title":null},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"3U01CA199277-07S1","title":"Genome-wide genotyping of existing samples from Asian American and Pacific Islander participants in the California Teachers Study cohort to facilitate broad and open future research"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"5P30CA033572-27","title":"Developmental Funds"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"3P30CA023100-25S4","title":"Specialized Cancer Center Support Grant"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"5R01CA077398-09","title":"CALIFORNIA TEACHERS STUDY"},{"funder_name":"National Institutes of Health","grant_id":"5UM1CA164917-02","title":"New Biospecimens to Enhance Research in the California Teachers Study Cohort"}],"total_grants":22,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[],"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0296611&type=printable","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296611","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/12068635","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://doaj.org/article/61cb5e8471db4a8e99470c42e263d408","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC12068635","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC12068635?pdf=render","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296611","host_type":""},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.22.23300461","host_type":""},{"url":"https://dx.doi.org/10.17615/x5gn-e762","host_type":""},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40354347","host_type":""},{"url":"http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296611","host_type":""}],"fields_of_study":[],"mesh_terms":["Humans","Cohort Studies","Prospective Studies","Databases, Factual","Adult","Middle Aged","Research Personnel","California","Female"],"keywords":["Adult","Databases, Factual","Science","Q","R","Middle Aged","California","Research Personnel","Cohort Studies","Medicine","Humans","Female","Prospective Studies","Research Article"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":3,"sdg_label":"3. 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