Evidence Synthesis Writing
Welcome
Choosing which evidence synthesis to conduct
What is a systematic review?
Carrie Price, Health Professions Librarian at Towson University, created a short video highlighting the basics of systematic reviews.
Basics
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On average, it takes 18 months to complete and you will need at least 2, preferably 3, people on your team.
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You need to have a clearly defined question (a scoping search may help you with this) and a protocol developed and registered prior to beginning your conduct your comprehensive literature search. You can, but not necessary, follow the PRISMA-P for developing and reporting your protocol.
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To locate all the evidence, you will need to conduct extensive complex literature searches of all the major biomedical databases, grey literature and possibly do some hand searching. If you don’t feel you have the time or skills for advanced literature searching, contact us for assistance (or look at the “How We Can Help” tab).
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Contact IS to have EndNote added to your profile (this can ONLY be accessed through MyDesk) so you can manage citations and screening. If you’ve not used EndNote before, they have tutorials you can access, or contact us for assistance.
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Remember to follow the PRISMA reporting guidelines and checklist, and include a flowchart within your report.
How can we help you?
Beyond providing support services as defined by these standards, librarians can assist in many aspects of evidence synthesis research to provide support, consultative guidance or co-authorship – depending on the level of assistance needed. To get started, submit an Evidence Synthesis Assistance Request and the librarian will get in touch with you within 1-2 business days.
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performing a search for you
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retrieving full-text articles
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advising on determining the best review type
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doing a search for any existing current report or protocol on your research question
- providing guidance on the process for your evidence synthesis
- providing help formulating the review question and framework (PICO, PICo, PEO, etc. see other options here
- providing training on search techniques for different databases and/or grey literature
- providing training on setting up alerts for new articles when your research topic has new literature published during your evidence synthesis writing time frame
- providing training on using EndNote and setting up groups for screening
- working with you to iteratively develop a comprehensive search strategy
- translating the search strategy to each database, conduct the search and submit abstrcts to the EndNote library
- providing documentaion of search strategies for each database and all searches conducted per PRISMA reporting guidelines
*As a consultant, it is expected that the librarian will be acknowledged for their contribution on the completed review submitted to any journal for publication.
Librarians as Co-authors**
- assisting with the development and registration of a protocol (when applicable)
- updating the search – specified based on expected length of review – to locate new reports
- improving transparency and reproducibility of the literature search using the PRISMA-S checklist (when applicable)
- writing the search strategy methodology for the review
- assisting in completing the appropriate PRISMA checklist and flow chart for publication (when applicable)
- reviewing and editing any review prior to submission to a publication
**Following the guidelines from ICMJE on the role of authors, it is expected that the librarian will be listed as an author on the completed review submitted to any journal for publication.
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Publisher sites will have indexes of all the publications they publish, and only their publications, in all the disciplines. Whether you can access any articles, however, depends on whether it is an open-access article or journal, or you pay for a subscription. This will be discussed more in Hand Searching.
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Databases, such as ClinicalKey for Nursing, MEDLINE and CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature), are subscribed to through a vendor (such as EBSCO) and index articles from journals from hundreds of publishers combined. Databases are usually discipline specific, so the ones we have here at Children’s are all within the medical field in some way. (There are exceptions, such as PubMed, PEDro and Trip, which are freely accessible). Even when you pay to access the database, your access to articles is still limited to whether the article or journal is open-access, or you pay for a subscription to all the journals within that database.
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LILACS - Latin America and Caribbean Health Science Literature
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MEDLINE Complete (via EBSCO)
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CINAHL Complete (via EBSCO)
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Ovid - link to Emcare and Ovid Nursing & Alied Health journals
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Ovid - link to Emcare and Ovid Nursing & Alied Health journals
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Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (via EBSCO)
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Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) (via EBSCO)
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ERIC (via EBSCO)
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OpenDissertations (via EBSCO)
- If you are, or a member of your team is, a member of an organization, you can look through their website for conference papers, webinars (which may have PDFs or PowerPoints included), reports, consensus papers, etc. on the topic you are reviewing.
- Dissertations and thesis papers can sometimes be found through Google Scholar, but we also have access to some dissertations from scholarly universities through Open Dissertations via EBSCOhost.
- Ask a colleague who may have access or a connection to a conference, technical report, or other on a topic they are an expert in related to your review.
- Contact the librarians.
- Global Index Medicus - The Global Index Medicus (GIM) provides worldwide access to biomedical and public health literature produced by and within low-middle income countries. The main objective is to increase the visibility and usability of this important set of resources. Maintained by WHO Regional Office Libraries on a central search platform allowing retrieval of bibliographical and full text information.
- Grey Matters: a practical tool for searching health-related grey literature - free word doc with lists of international websites search.
- Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
- MedNar - MedNar searches across more than 60 medical research sources, including commercial databases, medical societies, NIH resources, and other resources.
- Semantic Scholar - Providing "free, AI-driven search and discovery tools, and open resources for the global research community."
- SIREN Evidence and Resource Library - Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network from University of California, San Francisco.
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- WorldWideScience.org - Maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
- Center for Research Libraries - A resource for institutions outside of the U.S. and Canada.
- EThOS - Electronic Theses Online Service contains doctoral theses from candidates in the UK.
- OSF Preprints - A general preprint repository that covers architecture, business, engineering, life sciences, physical sciences and mathematics, arts and humanities, education, law, medicine and health sciences and social and behavioral sciences, among others.
- Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials
- EU Clinical Trials Register
- WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform
- Wikipedia Clinical Trial Registries List - This contains a list of registries by country.
AACODS_Checklist.evaluation and critical appraisal of grey literature.pdf
Public Health Ontario guide to appraising grey literature.pdf
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Looking over conference proceedings
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“Hand searching” tables of contents of relevant journals
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Checking reference lists of articles you have included in your appraisal
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Checking sources such as ResearchGate, OSF, or other open source repositories for articles
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Contacting authors if articles are unavailable, or they have grey literature/research that would be useful to incorporate
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Journals searched, if relevant citations found and used, should be described by journal name and years searched.
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Conference proceedings/abstracts listed by organization, conference title and year as well as abstract or poster referenced
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Authors contacted should also be included with any information they provide.
Now that you have learned, at least a little, about some of the databases, how can you know if you've found ALL relevant studies for your review before you begiin? Below are some tools that will assist you in finding additional studies. While I have listed the tool and the link to it, along with a brief description, if you need assistance don't hesitate to contact me for training on the tool.
- Yale MeSH Analyzer - analyzes citations for keywords,/MeSH terms: this tool helps you determine if there are additional keywords/terms you could use by comparing ones used at a glance, rather than scrolling down abstracts.
- PubMed PubReMiner - in comparing abstracts this tool shows you keywords,/MeSH terms used, how often they were used, and how many studies they were used in: helpful in seeing patterns.
- NLM MeSH on Demand - finds relevant MeSH terms within abstracts, that may or may not have been listed within the list provided in the MeSH listing.
- SR Accelerator: Polyglot Search Translator - translates search across different databases. A HUGE time saver as keywords/MeSH terms/truncation/modifiers/etc. differ between databases and it can take time to know how to best configure the search for each.
- CitationChaser - increases efficiency and reduces time in hand searching, by allowing you to look for articles that referenced a citation, or references used by that citation: saves considerable time in hand-searching!
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EndNote - Used as a citation management tool to collect literature during your literature search process. Also very helpful as a citation/reference tool when writing your report. This tip sheet show you how to request this from IS. Requesting EndNote 20.pdf.
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Rayyan - Free screening tool for blind screening between reviewers to reduce bias. Easy to use, and saves time.
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CASP (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme) Checklists
Tools and checklists for the critical appraisal of systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, diagnostic test studies, economic evaluation studies, qualitative research, case control studies, and cohort studies.
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Cochrane’s Risk of Bias Tools
Cochrane's risk of bias assessment tools for randomized, non-randomized studies – of Exposure, non-randomized studies – of Interventions, due to missing evidence, and their visualization tool for systematic reviews.
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Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
A guide to conducting Cochrane systematic reviews. Chapters cover data extraction and risk of bias assessment.
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GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) Working Group
Resources, including guidelines, to grade the quality of medical evidence and assign a level of recommendation. Produced by the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation Working Group.
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Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Tools
Checklists for reviewing randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, case control, case reports, diagnostic test accuracy, qualitative, and many more study types.
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Latitudes Network
A searchable library of validity assessment tools, but not the confidence of the evidence, of articles used in evidence syntheses. Tools that are in development as well as training videos are also available.
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PEDro Scale
A checklist that rates the quality and interpretability of clinical trials, but not necessarily clinical usefulness.
Guidelines, frameworks, and expectations from journal publishers have grown in the last few decade to improve reproducibility, reduce bias, and eliminate waste.
- PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) is "an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. PRISMA 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"1. It has reporting guidelines (called extensions) for a range of evidence synthesis reviews, with more in development. Citing use of the PRISMA statement, or another reporting guideline, in articles has been a source of some confusion. To assist authors in properly stating how they used the PRISMA reporting guidelines, a statement was released in 2021. How to properly use the PRISMA Statement. 2021.pdf
- EQUATOR Network "is an “umbrella” organisation that brings together researchers, medical journal editors, peer reviewers, developers of reporting guidelines, research funding bodies and other collaborators with mutual interest in improving the quality of research publications and of research itself." 2 One of the resources available through EQUATOR is a page of Toolkits. Included here are tools to help you select the best reporting guideline for your article. While many use the PRISMA reporting guideline, there are other options available for different types - just as there are different frameworks for question formation depending on the type of evidence synthesis.
- Scoping Review Framework - JBI provides an overview of the enhancement of the original framework developed by Arksey and O’Malley in 2005.
References
1. http://www.prisma-statement.org/
2. https://www.equator-network.org/about-us/equator-network-what-we-do-and-how-we-are-organised/
3. Peters MDJ, Godfrey C, McInerney P, Munn Z, Tricco AC, Khalil, H. Chapter 11: Scoping Reviews (2020 version). In: Aromataris E, Munn Z (Editors). JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, JBI, 2020.
4. Updated methodological guidance for the conduct of scoping reviews. Peters MDJ, Marnie C, Tricco AC, Pollock D, Munn Z, Alexander L, McInerney P, Godfrey CM, Khalil H.JBI Evid Synth. 2020 Oct;18(10):2119-2126. doi: 10.11124/JBIES-20-00167.PMID: 33038124.