UofL Libraries: Evidence-Based Practice: Write a Systematic Review

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) offers guidance on thorough reporting for systematic reviews. The 2020 PRISMA Checklist and Flow Diagram provide minimum requirements for ensuring a transparent review. Guidance for writing systematic review protocols and extensions to ensure complete reporting for abstracts, scoping reviews, searching, and more are also available.

Systematic Review Reporting Tools

PROSPERO
PROSPERO is a platform to register protocols for systematic reviews, rapid reviews, and umbrella reviews. Submitting your protocol is best practice to ensure methodological transparency and to prevent the duplication of systematic reviews. Protocols must be submitted before data extraction begins.
AMSTAR Checklist
The AMSTAR checklist is designed for evaluating the reporting quality of systematic reviews, but it can also be used to guide the writing of a review.
A Structured Approach to Documenting a Search Strategy for Publication
Kable AK, Pich J, Maslin-Prothero SE. A structured approach to documenting a search strategy for publication: A 12 step guideline for authors. Nurse Educ Today. 2012 Nov; 32(8):878-886. DOI: 10.1016/j.nedt.2012.02.022.

The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions provides complete guidance on the steps to conducting a systematic review. Core methods, such as scope determination, searching, study selection, data collection, navigating bias, and meta-analysis, are covered, as well as addressing topics from specific perspectives, such as equity, adverse effects, and economic evidence.

Methodological Advice

Grey Matters
Downloadable tool from the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health for searching grey literature in the health sciences.
Data Extraction in Meta-Analysis
Advice from Oxford University's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine on handling data for meta-analyses. Diagnostic accuracy outcomes, dichotomous outcomes, continuous outcomes, and general issues are covered.

Considering a Systematic Review?

Well-done systematic reviews are important contributions to the literature, and they have the potential to influence clinical practice and health policy. However, systematic reviews are long-term, often intense research projects. Cornell University Library provides a helpful decision tree and overview of the different types of review articles, their methodological requirements, and their contributions to the literature.

Systematic Review Support

Kornhauser Library's clinical librarians are available to provide support in planning and searching for systematic, scoping, and narrative review projects. If you are interested in this service, please fill out our advanced literature review request form. If you have a librarian embedded in your department or whom you have worked with previously, you may also contact them directly.

Conducting Specific Types of Reviews

Health Equity: Evidence Synthesis and Knowledge Translation Methods
Welch VA, Petticrew M, O'Neill J, Waters E, Armstrong R, Bhutta ZA, Francis D, Koehlmoos TP, Kristjansson E, Pantoja T, Tugwell P. Health equity: Evidence synthesis and knowledge translation methods. Syst Rev. 2013; 2:43.
Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis of Preclinical Studies
Sena ES, Currie GL, McCann SK, Macleod MR, Howells DW. Systematic reviews and meta-analysis of preclinical studies: Why perform them and how to appraise them critically. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2014; 34:737-742. DOI: 10.1038/jcbfm.2014.28.