A systematic review (SR) attempts to collate all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question. It uses explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view to minimizing bias, thus providing more reliable findings from which conclusions can be drawn and decisions made. (The Cochrane Handbook)
The Lamar Soutter Library's Systematic Review service is available to UMass Chan faculty, staff, and students, as well as clinicians at UMass Memorial. While co-researchers from other institutions may be involved with the project, at the very least the lead researcher must be affiliated with UMass Chan or UMass Memorial.
Incorporating a librarian into your systematic review team can save you a lot of time and effort. Here is how we can help:
Please note: By partnering with a librarian for the services listed above, you are agreeing to include the librarian as an author.
If you'd like to partner with one of our trained librarians for your systematic review, please fill out our Systematic Review Intake Form.
Team
At a minimum, you will need two people to conduct a systematic review as each citation will need to be independently reviewed by two people (with conflicts being resolved by consensus). However, it is recommended to have a larger team in order to get through the review in a more timely manner. In addition to adding more reviewers and bringing a librarian onto your team, you will want to find a statistician if you intend on also conducting a meta-analysis.
Time
Systematic reviews are a major time commitment. From the time of inception to the time of submission, it may take between 18 to 24 months. There are many steps involved in the review; the search development and reference collection alone could take between 3 to 6 months.
Clearly Defined Question
Formulate a clear, well-defined research question and identify key concepts. Define your terminology. The PICO framework is a useful tool to specify population, disease or problem, intervention, comparison, and outcome.
Protocol
A protocol outlines the methodology of the systematic review, promotes transparency, and helps with project management. It should include the rationale for the systematic review, key questions broken into PICO components, inclusion/exclusion criteria, literature searches for published/unpublished literature, data abstraction/data management, assessment of methodological quality of individual studies, and data synthesis for each key question. This should be developed prior to the formal literature search and may be needed for publication. Consider registering your protocol. If you need help deciding where to register your protocol, contact a librarian. Here is a link to an example protocol template from the University of Warwick.
Systematic and Reproducible Literature Search
The librarian you bring onto your team will develop a systematic search strategy using appropriate controlled vocabulary terms and keywords and will translate that search across the relevant databases. On your part, locating a few relevant articles that may address your key questions will aid the librarian in this process.
Systematic Review Software
By partnering with a Lamar Soutter librarian on your systematic review, you will also gain access to Covidence, a support tool that streamlines the screening, quality assessment, and data extraction processes -- and on average reduces the amount of time it takes to complete a review by thirty-five percent.
Reporting Guidelines
An important part of publishing a systematic review is transparent reporting of your review. Some tools that can help you in this process are PRISMA or The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Part 1, section 3: Reporting the Review). Target publications may also have their own reporting standards and guidance.
Adapted from https://guides.mclibrary.duke.edu/sysreview
