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Conducting Literature and Systematic Reviews: Systematic Review Process

Systematic Review Process

  1. Determine the research question
  2. Assemble the research team
  3. Determine if there are any registered (in process) or published SRs on the topic
  4. Develop and register the protocol for the study
  5. Develop a comprehensive search strategy, informed by your inclusion and exclusion criteria
  6. Select studies to include based on the predefined inclusion/exclusion criteria
  7. Extract and analyze data
  8. Interpret and synthesize results for publication
  9. Update review as required

Check out "A Roadmap for Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses" for more detail on workflows.

Who needs to be on a review team?

All systematic reviews are conducted by teams to ensure that reviews are useful and comprehensive, include input from people who know about and have experience with the interventions reviewed, reduce errors or bias when interpreting the information reviewed, and consider the viewpoints of key stakeholders.

Different organizations recommend varying sizes for review teams. At minimum, a team needs to include:

  • 2+ Content experts
    • Ideally, 2 reviewers and 1 tie breaker

Consider also including a statistician (especially for a meta-analysis) and an information professional or librarian* (for crafting searches).

Note: There is no limit on the size of a review team. Cochrane recommends working with an advisory group, while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Community Guide recommends a 6-12 person coordination team, consultants, and a dissemination team.

* Clemson Librarians are always happy to assist with systematic reviews! Due to ethical considerations, Libraries faculty at Clemson may offer limited assistance with search strategy creation or methodology to undergraduate students conducting systematic reviews (or related methodological projects) for graded assignments. Librarians may elect to limit participation or not participate as a full member on review teams per the individual librarians' discretion.

Timeline

Systematic Review Timeline
Month Activity
1-2 Preparation of question and protocol
2-3 Pilot test of eligibility criteria for searches
3-8 Searching the literature for published and unpublished studies
3-10 Tests of: risk of bias assessment, validity assessments, data collection
3-10 Data collection and entry
5-10 Follow up of missing information
8-10 Analysis
1-11 Preparation of review report
12+ Keeping the review up-to-date

Adapted from the Cochrane Systematic Review Handbook 5.1: http://handbook.cochrane.org/chapter_2/box_2_3_b_timeline_for_a_cochrane_review.htm

Note: Because of the time, teams, and ongoing work needed to keep a review up-to-date, systematic reviews are not recommended as class or term projects.