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Systematic reviews

Get help

Before you book an appointment about your review, please check our support policy further down this page to understand what we can and cannot help with

Community of Practice

Doing a systematic review? Join our Microsoft Teams site.

We provide an online community space for researchers to advise and support each other.

The site is open to experienced reviewers from across Imperial as well as those who are new to the process.

Systematic review guide

Our Medicine Subject Librarians have developed this guide to support all staff and students at Imperial who are involved in conducting systematic reviews.

Each section introduces the activities involved in that step and highlights any necessary documentation or mandatory reporting items.

The sections provide links to further resources to support the review activities and any relevant tools used to manage or support that step.

NHS staff will also find it useful for scoping and other types of research reviews.

Library Services support for your systematic review

The Cochrane Handbook recommends that ‘Review authors should work closely, from the start of the protocol, with an experienced medical / healthcare librarian or information specialist’.

Due to the amount of time required to provide these services, and the need to respect course requirements, levels of service for academic staff and students are outlined below and apply for other types of knowledge syntheses such as scoping reviews, rapid reviews and umbrella reviews.

Students
Researchers and academic staff

Students

Outline of librarian involvement in the process

There are many steps to the process of conducting a systematic review.

The time required to complete a systematic review varies widely. Student projects will have limited time to complete the research, which should be considered when formulating the research question and deciding on the scope and scale of the topic.

For doctoral students, master’s students, and undergraduate students, where the review project is part of your dissertation, thesis or coursework, librarians are available for consultation on the following aspects of systematic reviews. Additional help may be available on a case-by-case basis.

Formulating a suitable research question
Providing resources to answer other questions about the review process
Checking for published or in-process reviews on the same topic
Designing and building the search strategy (including MeSH, filters, etc.)
Searching grey literature (your librarian may be able to suggest suitable sources and provide guidance on how to search these sources, as well as advice on citation searches, hand searching, or contacting key individuals, organisations and companies in a subject area)
Reviewing keywords, syntax, MeSH, subject headings, wildcards, etc.
Advising on reference management, screening and deduplication of search results

Five steps to systematic review or project support:

Start: Research methods (VLE)
Explore: Subject support – Medicine and Medical Biosciences (e.g. systematic review flowchart, literature searching tutorial )
Engage: MS Teams – Community of Practice
Questions: Email lib-med-liaison@imperial.ac.uk
Consult: Online Consultation – Book a one to one appointment. Once the literature is scoped and you have begun your searches, you may need more in-depth advice relating to your specific search strategy and question, this is the time to book a one to one consultation with a Medicine Subject Librarian.

Consultation

Before your first meeting with your librarian, we expect you to have consulted the Library’s Literature searching tutorial.

You should also provide a draft review protocol with the following information:

Background justification for the review
Draft research question
Draft inclusion and exclusion criteria

For information about the review process, including links to many external sources of advice and support, see our Systematic review guide.

Researchers and academic staff

Using this service

If you require a consultation, please book an online appointment.

Outline of librarian involvement in the process

There are many steps to the process of conducting a systematic review.

We encourage you to visit the Systematic Reviews Community of Practice, where you can post questions, answers, experiences and best practice among fellow peers engaged in the review process.

Librarians may be available for consultation on the following aspects of systematic reviews. Additional help may be available on a case-by-case basis.

Formulating a suitable research question
Providing resources to answer other questions about the review process
Checking for published or in-process reviews on the same topic
Designing and building the search strategy (including MeSH, filters, etc.)
Searching grey literature (your librarian may be able to advise on searching suitable sources, citation searches, hand searching, etc.)
Reviewing keywords, syntax, MeSH, subject headings, wildcards, etc.
Advising on reference management and deduplication of search results
Advising on screening of results and the PRISMA flow
Signposting for information on publishing, open access publishing, etc.

Consultation

Before your first meeting with your librarian, we expect you to have consulted the Library’s Literature searching tutorial.

You should also provide a draft review protocol with the following information:

Background justification for the review
Draft research question
Draft inclusion and exclusion criteria

For information about the review process, including links to external sources of advice and support, see our Systematic review guide.

Follow up

Librarians can provide feedback on the strategy and advise on issues with search terms, syntax, structure, translation of the search strategy to other databases and citation management (e.g. exporting and deduplication of search results). We recommend the EndNote reference management software for systematic reviews.

We can also advise on the use of Covidence systematic review management software for screening and review of search results.

Updating systematic reviews

As a systematic review may take many months, you may need to rerun the search to find relevant articles published in the intervening period. Your librarian can advise on this process.

Covidence

Covidence is a web-based systematic review management platform created in collaboration with Cochrane to manage screening and data collection for individuals or multiple authors.

Key benefits include:

Streamlines production of systematic reviews by supporting collaboration and keeping decision making and documentation in one place, safe and easy to access for the whole team
Students and experienced reviewers alike will find it intuitive to use and it can be used to do a full systematic review or support a literature review done in a systematic manner
Imperial users can invite external reviewers (e.g. from an NHS Trust or other university) to be co-reviewers, even if those reviewers do not have access to Covidence via their institution

The key steps supported by Covidence are:

Import of citations from a range of reference managers and de-duplication of study citations (with manual override)
Title and abstract level screening
Full-text review
Risk of bias assessment
Extraction of study characteristics and outcomes
Export of data into RevMan and Excel
Export of references to reference management software

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