Systematic review resources
This page includes resources to help you perform searches for systematic reviews. Systematic reviews bring together all the research that has been done on a specific topic. This should include unpublished material and grey literature, and shouldn't be limited to specific languages.
Two of the most comprehensive guides on conducting a systematic review are:
Registering and reporting your review
Systematic reviews should be registered at an early stage in the international prospective register PROSPERO
The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines set out minimum reporting standards for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. It is made up of:
PRISMA-S (standards for searches in systematic reviews)
Rethlefsen, M.L., Kirtley, S., Waffenschmidt, S. et al. PRISMA-S: an extension to the PRISMA Statement for Reporting Literature Searches in Systematic Reviews. Syst Rev 10, 39 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-020-01542-z
Doing your systematic review search
A selection of guides are produced by various organisations with expertise in producing systematic reviews.
The Cochrane Handbook (Version 6.3, 2022) - See Chapter 4: Searching for and selecting studies, in particular. This guide partiuclarly looks at the production of Cochrane Collaboration systematic reviews but many of the techniques are relevant for non-Cochrane reviews.
Joanna Briggs Institute - JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis - Includes information on multiple types of reviews, including systematic reviews, scoping reviews, mixed methods reviews and umbrella reviews
CRD's guidance for undertaking systematic reviews in healthcare (2009)
Campbell Collaboration for fields related to healthcare
https://campbellcollaboration.org/research-resources/writing-a-campbell-systematic-review.html
NICE. Developing NICE guidelines: the manual (2014) - See Chapter 4: Developing review questions and planning the evidence review, and Chapter 5: Identifying the evidence: literature searching and evidence submission.
Institute of Medicine. Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews (2011)