1. Put together a systematic review team.
· Generally, a team needs to have at least three people to reduce bias. Two team members will review each search result, with the third team member acting as a tiebreaker.
2. Develop a focused research question.
3. Establish criteria for including and excluding studies.
4. Develop and register your protocol.
· Check to see if there is a systematic review published or in progress on your topic.
· Prospero, Cochrane, and Campbell Collaboration are three sites that allow you to register your protocol.
5. Conduct an exhaustive literature search – often done by a professional, or a librarian.
· Librarians should be considered a member of the team and receive authorship for their contributions. Librarians will often write or contribute to the Methods section.
6. Review the titles and abstracts of the search results.
· The review of articles should be a “blind” review, done by at least two individuals to reduce bias.
7. Select and evaluate the articles/studies that meet inclusion.
8. Extract the data and gather the evidence.
9. Come to conclusions.
10. Review work & run searches a last time to make sure you have all recent publications.
11. Make corrections or changes as needed.
12. Submit work for publication.
· The whole systematic review process on takes, on average, at least 12-18 months.
