Review of: "Development and Functionality of the ABC Tool (Automated Boolean Composer) to Simplify and Standardize Search Strategy Construction in Bibliographic Databases"

Thanks for the chance to review.The study describes how the Epistemonikos Evidence Taxonomy can be used to populate 9,500 pre-developed Boolean searches, and how any users could take advantage of these searches.The study claims "the ABC Tool has the potential to substantially enhance the ef ciency, reproducibility, and methodological quality of evidence synthesis work ows."The paper is very well reported, and it is easy to follow.Major comments: I fully agree with the authors that the tool is very valuable for creating search strategies.It really allows non-expert librarians to create searches that could be more sensible and relevant, and way better than they would do on their own.The point here is the paper demonstrates that they have a role in evidence synthesis.Whether I would agree the paper supports that it could have a role, I don't see the paper proving these strategies are better than the current gold standard, which is to get an information specialist to write the search strategy for you.The paper does not touch on many elements that would be critical for good evidence synthesis, such as how to translate the search into different databases.