Systematic Reviews: Step by Step
Not sure where to start on your review? Librarians can help! Contact Jenny Mills, Medical Library Director (jenny.mills@belmont.edu) or Aine O’Connor, Health Sciences Librarian (aine.oconnor@belmont.edu).
Start Here: Planning The Review
- Develop Your Research Question: Librarians can help you use PICO or other frameworks, check for similar reviews, and discuss what kind of review is right for your team.
- Gather Info: As a team, you will search for background information, identify eligibility criteria (i.e., what types of articles you’ll include), and create a search strategy.
- Create a Protocol: A protocol is a formalized plan for your review, and helps mitigate bias or later data manipulation. You can follow reporting guidelines like PRISMA for your protocol. Some even get published!
Next: Doing the Review
- Search: Work with your librarian to develop a search strategy for searching multiple databases as well as “grey” (unpublished) literature. Run the searches.
- Manage Citations: Export the search results to a citation manager like EndNote or Mendeley. De-duplicate the results. If desired, import the results into review management software like Covidence or Rayyan.
- Screen Citations: Screen the results against your pre-defined eligibility criteria, first looking at titles/abstracts and then at the full text. Determine which sources will be included, and update your PRISMA flow chart.
- Conduct Quality Assessment: Determine the quality of your included articles using an appraisal tool like GRADE. Include your assessment(s) in your final manuscript.
Finally: Last Steps of the Review
- Extract Data: Using your pre-created data extraction tool, gather relevant data from your included studies. If needed, create a table for each included study.
- Synthesize and Write: Synthesize the included studies and analyze how they may or may not answer your research question, with consideration of the number and quality of articles.
- Publish the Review: Many journals publish systematic reviews across different disciplines in the health sciences. Some systematic reviews are highly cited and/or inform practice.
