Systematic Reviews

An international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care, welfare, public health, education, crime, justice, and international development, where there is a health related outcome. PROSPERO aims to provide a comprehensive listing of systematic reviews registered at inception to help avoid duplication and reduce opportunity for reporting bias by enabling comparison of the completed review with what was planned in the protocol. You must register for an account to submit your review.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. Provides the checklist and flow diagram for creating systematic reviews.

Many systematic reviews conduct synthesis of intervention effects without conducting meta-analysis of effect sizes. This is often referred to as “narrative synthesis”. However, there is no clear definition about what “narrative synthesis” is or how it should be conducted. To avoid confusion we have developed the acronym SWiM (Synthesis Without Meta-analysis), synthesis of quantitative intervention effect data which does not reply on a meta-analysis of standardised effect sizes.

Comprehensive searchable database of reporting guidelines. Includes guidelines for systematic reviews, study protocols, randomized trials, guidelines and more.

Official guide that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions.

Twenty-one standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain.

Intended to improve the reporting of a randomized controlled trial (RCT), it comprises a 25-item checklist and a flow diagram. The checklist items focus on reporting how the trial was designed, analyzed, and interpreted; the flow diagram displays the progress of all participants through the trial.

An ongoing collaboration between the Universities of Newcastle, Australia and Ottawa, Canada to assess the quality of nonrandomised studies, including case-control and cohort studies.

Step-by-step guidelines for conceptualizing, designing, and carrying out a study of the appropriateness of medical or surgical procedures (for either diagnosis or treatment) when there is a lack of randomized controlled trials.

From the National Library of Medicine, this chart lists the major biomedical research reporting guidelines that provide advice for reporting research methods and findings.

The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) Instrument evaluates the process of practice guideline development and the quality of reporting.

The PRESS Guideline provides a set of recommendations that should be used to evaluate electronic search strategies developed for systematic review and health technology assessment (HTA) reports.