Systematic Reviews: Methods & Resources

Gold-standard guideline on how to perform and write-up a systematic review and/or meta-analysis of the outcomes reported in multiple clinical trials of therapeutic interventions

Campbell, M. (2020). Synthesis without meta-analysis (SWiM) in systematic reviews: reporting guideline. BMJ, 368. Guideline on how to analyze evidence for a narrative review, to provide a recommendation based on heterogenous study types

Community Preventive Services Task Force (2021). The Methods Manual for Community Guide Systematic Reviews. (Public Health Prevention systematic review guidelines)

Cornell University Library (2019). A basic framework for a literature review.

Brooke BS, Schwartz TA, Pawlik TM. MOOSE Reporting Guidelines for Meta-analyses of Observational Studies. JAMA Surg. 2021;156(8):787–788. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2021.0522

Flowchart to help you choose the proper review methodology for your project

Catalog of tools that support various tasks within the systematic review and wider evidence synthesis process. Tools include the 'Polyglot Search Translator'.

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (2022)

Provides guidance on how to analyze both quantitative and qualitative research

Pollock, A., & Berge, E. (2018). International journal of stroke : official journal of the International Stroke Society, 13(2), 138–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747493017743796

Sutton, A., Clowes, M., Preston, L., & Booth, A. (2019). Health information and libraries journal, 36(3), 202–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12276

Available for free to GW affiliates, this is a popular tool for facilitating screening decisions, used by the Cochrane Collaboration. Register for an account.

SPSS, SAS, Stata, NVivo, Atlas.ti, and MATLAB

Software to create survey forms for research or data collection or data extraction.

Free, web-based and has a training environment, tutorials, and example templates of systematic review data extraction forms

ReviewManager (RevMan) is Cochrane's bespoke software for writing Cochrane Reviews.

Free, web-based tool for collecting and screening citations. It has options to screen with multiple people, masking each other.

Free, web application to create, manage and share summaries of research evidence (called Evidence Profiles and Summary of Findings Tables) for reviews or guidelines, uses the GRADE criteria to evaluate each paper under review.

Needs subscription. Create coded data extraction forms from templates.

Needs subscription. Like DistillerSR, tool for text mining, data clustering, classification and term extraction

Needs subscription. Qualitative data analysis.

Needs subscription. Qualitative data analysis, similar to NVIVO in that it can be used to code interview transcripts, identify word co-occurence, cloud based.

ReviewManager (RevMan) is Cochrane's bespoke software for writing Cochrane Reviews.

a free set of workbooks designed for Microsoft Excel that, based on your input, automatically produce meta-analyses including Forest Plots. Produced for Erasmus University Rotterdam joint research institute.

Another set of Excel worksheets and instructions to generate a Forest Plot. Published as Neyeloff, J.L., Fuchs, S.C. & Moreira, L.B. Meta-analyses and Forest plots using a microsoft excel spreadsheet: step-by-step guide focusing on descriptive data analysis. BMC Res Notes 5, 52 (2012). https://doi-org.proxygw.wrlc.org/10.1186/1756-0500-5-52

instructions are at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/forestplot/vignettes/forestplot.html and you can download the R code package from https://github.com/gforge/forestplot