LibGuides: Systematic Reviews: 1. Planning a Review

Planning Your Review

At the beginning of the review process, you will conduct a thorough search to ensure you are not replicating an existing review. During this stage, you will also:

map out your timeline
assemble a team to complete the study selection and screening processes
begin to develop your review protocol
explore and select the tools and software you plan to use to facilitate your review.

Chapter 1 of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions provides detailed guidance for beginning a review.

Locating Existing Systematic Reviews

Before starting work on a systematic review, check to see that a systematic review does not already exist or is currently under way.

Existing systematic reviews may also provide a starting point for selecting a review topic and for reviewing protocols.

The Campbell Library Systematic reviews of the effects of social interventions.
Cochrane Library Systematic reviews of health care and clinical interventions.
PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews. PROSPERO includes protocol details for systematic reviews relevant to health and social care, welfare, public health, education, crime, justice, and international development, where there is a health related outcome.
The Guide to Community Preventive Services (AKA The Community Guide) The Community Guide conducts systematic reviews of interventions in many topic areas to learn what works to promote public health. The Community Preventive Services Task Force uses the results of these reviews to issue evidence-based recommendations and findings to the public health community.
Centre for Reviews and Dissemination The University of York's Centre for Reviews and Dissemination conducts systematic reviews covering a wide range of health care topics.
Bandolier Knowledge Library Bandolier, an independent journal by Oxford University scientists, searches for systematic reviews of treatments, of evidence about diagnosis, epidemiology or health economics, and abstracts it.
LILACS LILACS is the most important and comprehensive index of scientific and technical literature of Latin America and the Caribbean.
PubMed PubMed comprises more than 26 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. Use UC-eLinks to link to full text when not otherwise available.
Canadian Health Technology Assessment Health technology assessment producers from Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta have partnered with the National Institute for Health Research, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination to create a common repository for Canadian HTA reports within the existing international HTA Database.
NIHR Evaluation, Trials, and Studies The National Institute for Health Research publishes research findings in the NIHR Journals Library and share evidences through the NIHR Dissemination Centre and elsewhere.
Systematic Review Data Repository This is a data repository from the U.S. Dept. of Health of Human Services, Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ).
AHRQ Research Summaries, Reviews, and Reports The U.S. Dept. of Health of Human Services, Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) routinely funds systematic reviews on a wide variety of topics.
EEPI-Centre DoPHER (Database of Promoting Health Effectiveness Reviews) The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre's DoPHER is unique in its focussed coverage of systematic and non-systematic reviews of effectiveness in health promotion and public health worldwide.

Project Timeline

The average time to complete a systematic review is 18 months. Below is suggested timeline from Cochrane:

Preparation of protocol: 1 – 2 months
Searches for published and unpublished studies: 3-8 months
Pilot test of eligibility criteria: 2-3 months
Inclusion assessments: 3-8 months
Pilot test of ‘Risk of bias’ assessment: 3 months
Validity assessments: 3-10 months
Pilot test of data collection: 3 months
Data collection: 3-10 months
Data entry: 3-10 months
Follow up of missing information: 5-11 months
Analysis: 8-10 months
Preparation of review report: 1-11 months
Keeping the review up-to-date: 12 months

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Systematic Reviews

Planning Your Review

Locating Existing Systematic Reviews

Planning a Systematic Review: CRECS uOttawa (9.39)

Systematic Searches #2: Conducting a systematic review from Yale University (7.49)

Project Timeline

Things to consider