Systematic Reviews

First of all: conducting a systematic review takes Time! On average, systematic reviews require 18 months of preparation.

All that is necessary to start a systematic review is a question. However, finalizing it requires great time and effort. These are the steps involved in conducting a systematic review:

In this guide, the following steps are described:

1. Preparation: check if your review is justified;  gather a team, refine the research question and write a protocol

2. Comprehensive searches: use multiple databases to search the literature with good search strategies

3. Manage the references: usa a reference managing tool to deduplicate and manage the references

4. Study selection: select relevant studies based on your inclusion, exclusion and eligibility criteria.

5. Critical appraisal: arefully and systematically examine the research to judge its trustworthiness, its value and relevance in a particular context (Burls, 2009)

6. Analyse the data

7. Write the report: Use appropriate guidelines for reporting your review for publication.

8. Publish the review