Systematic Review Resources - Resources and Tools

Cochrane is for anyone interested in using high-quality information to make health decisions. Whether you are a clinician, patient or carer, researcher, or policy-maker, Cochrane is a powerful tool to enhance your healthcare knowledge and decision-making.

A thorough guide following through the Systematic Review process from protocol to data extraction.

PRISMA is an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Primarily focuses on the reporting of reviews evaluating the effects of interventions, but can also be used as a basis for reporting systematic reviews with objectives other than evaluating interventions (e.g. evaluating aetiology, prevalence, diagnosis or prognosis). Free downloadable tools, including the PRISMA Diagram.

PROSPERO accepts registrations for systematic reviews, rapid reviews and umbrella reviews. PROSPERO does not accept scoping reviews or literature scans.

Literature review and synthesis is central to research and evidence-informed decision making. The SRA is a suite of automation tools built to make conducting all types of evidence reviews or synthesis easier and faster. Each tool is designed to help with a specific review task: researchers can use as few or as many as they like.

This tool automates this process by making use of the Lens.org API. An input article list can be used to return a list of all referenced records, and/or all citing records in the Lens.org database (consisting of PubMed, PubMed Central, CrossRef, Microsoft Academic Graph and CORE)

An online browser based tool that can be used for the screening and data extraction process of a systematic review.

Rayyan is a mobile app or web-based browser tool that can be used for the screening process of a systematic review.

Link provides acess to several research templates, including systematic reviews. Free registration provides access to fillable forms. The Center for Open Science (OSF) was founded in 2013 to start, scale, and sustain open research practices that will democratize access to research, improve inclusion of all stakeholders, enhance accountability to research integrity, facilitate the self-corrective process of science, expand transparency and sharing of all research content, and improve research rigor and reproducibility.

The MECIR Standards present a guide to the conducting and reporting of Cochrane Intervention Reviews. Includes the reporting of protocols and the planning, conducting and reporting of updates.

The CEBM ‘Levels of Evidence 1’ document sets out one approach to systematising the process of rating the quality of evidence for different question types.

STROBE stands for an international, collaborative initiative of epidemiologists, methodologists, statisticians, researchers and journal editors involved in the conduct and dissemination of observational studies, with the common aim of STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology