Systematic Reviews

Research Findings & Reports provides summaries of research findings and full research reports

The Campbell Collaboration (C2) helps people make well-informed decisions by preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews in education, crime and justice, social welfare and international development.

CRD is part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is a department of the University of York. CRD provides research-based information about the effects of health and social care interventions via our databases and undertake systematic reviews evaluating the research evidence on health and public health questions of national and international importance.

Cochrane is a global independent network of health practitioners, researchers, patient advocates and others, responding to the challenge of making the vast amounts of evidence generated through research useful for informing decisions about health. We are a not-for-profit organisation with collaborators from over 120 countries working together to produce credible, accessible health information that is free from commercial sponsorship and other conflicts of interest.

The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) is part of the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London.

The EPPI-Centre is committed to informing policy and professional practice with sound evidence. As such, it is involved in two main areas of work:

Systematic reviews: This includes developing methods for systematic reviews and research syntheses, conducting reviews, supporting others to undertake reviews, and providing guidance and training in this area.

Research use: This includes studying the use/non-use of research evidence in personal, practice and political decision-making, supporting those who wish to find and use research to help solve problems, and providing guidance and training in this area.

3ie funds impact evaluations and systematic reviews that generate high quality evidence on what works in development and why. Evidence on development effectiveness can inform policy and improve the lives of poor people.

The Joanna Briggs Institute collaborates internationally with over 70 entities across the world. The Institute and its collaborating entities promote and support the synthesis, transfer and utilization of evidence through identifying feasible, appropriate, meaningful and effective healthcare practices to assist in the improvement of healthcare outcomes globally.

Translational Science
Synthesis Science
Implementation Science
Software for health professionals
Promoting evidence-based practice

The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions is the official document that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions. The current version of the Handbook is 5.1.0 (updated March 2011).

IOM's (2011) standards address the entire systematic review process, from locating, screening, and selecting studies for the review, to synthesizing the findings and assessing the overall quality of the body of evidence, to producing the final review report. Includes a link to the IOM Standards for Systematic Reviews.

The Standards may be downloaded.

Includes relevant existing Campbell Collaboration policy, guidelines, and/or templates. For example: how to write a protocol or a review

This guidance has been written for those with an understanding of health research but who are new to systematic reviews; those with some experience but who want to learn more; and for commissioners. We hope that experienced systematic reviewers will also fi nd this guidance of value; for example when planning a review in an area that is unfamiliar or with an expanded scope. This guidance might also be useful to those who need to evaluate the quality of systematic reviews, including, for example, anyone with responsibility for implementing systematic review findings.

The aim of the PRISMA Statement is to help authors improve the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. We have focused on randomized trials, but PRISMA can also be used as a basis for reporting systematic reviews of other types of research, particularly evaluations of interventions. PRISMA may also be useful for critical appraisal of published systematic reviews, although it is not a quality assessment instrument to gauge the quality of a systematic review.

PROSPERO is an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care. Key features from the review protocol are recorded and maintained as a permanent record. PROSPERO aims to provide a comprehensive listing of systematic reviews registered at inception to help avoid unplanned duplication and enable comparison of reported review methods with what was planned in the protocol.

It is advisable to search PROSPERO prior to commencing a systematic review to ensure you are not duplicating an in-process review.

Registration provides transparency in the review process. It helps counter publication bias by providing a permanent record of prospectively registered reviews, irrespective of whether they are eventually published or not. It helps safeguard against reporting biases by revealing any differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol.