Systematic Reviews

These are suggested steps for what to do in the earliest stage of your project:

• Gather a team of minimum 3 members - systematic reviews are not a solo project!
• Identify the research question.
• Do a preliminary search for any recent systematic reviews on the same topic.  
  • If your topic has been reviewed before, is there a good reason for another systematic review? Has new evidence been published since the prior review? Is it missing new major studies? 

Starting off with a focused question will make your search for evidence easier because you'll already have an idea of your search terms. One way to form your question is to use the PICO model to define parts of your question.

• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.3 (updated February 2022). Cochrane, 2022. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook.

  • Chapter 2: Determining the scope of the review and the questions it will address

• Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews

  Chapter 2, section on "Formulating the Topic"

• Topic Refinement

  A PowerPoint presentation from the AHRQ Training Modules for the Systematic Reviews Methods Guide. Offers helpful tips for refining a systematic review topic.

After defining your systematic review question, it's a good idea to make sure there is a need for a new review on your topic. Doing a quick search of the literature helps to ensure that a similar review is not already in progress elsewhere, or has recently been published. 

Some resources to check for similar reviews include:

• PROSPERO

  PROSPERO is an international register of proposed systematic reviews. PROSPERO is a great place to check and see if a systematic review on the topic you are interested in is already in progress. Not all SRs in progress are registered in PROSPERO, but it is still a good place to check.

• PubMed

  To find systematic reviews in PubMed, begin by entering in your search terms. From the search results page, check off "Systematic Review" from the Article Type filter along the left side of the page, the results will automatically update. To see the newest articles, make sure the page results are sorted by "Most recent" rather than "Best Match."

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  An international biomedical literature database that indexes more than 8,500 peer-reviewed journals for users looking for drug, medical device, and disease-related information.

Modified with permission from  https://henryford.libguides.com/sr

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