Title: Mastering the Art of Crafting a Systematic Literature Review Protocol
Embarking on the journey of a systematic literature review protocol can be a daunting task for many.
It requires a meticulous approach, extensive research, and the ability to synthesize vast amounts of
information. However, with the right guidance and support, navigating through this process can
become more manageable and rewarding.
Understanding the intricacies of a systematic literature review protocol is essential before diving into
the writing process. It serves as a roadmap, outlining the methodology and procedures for
conducting a comprehensive review of existing literature on a specific topic. By following a
structured protocol, researchers can ensure transparency, reproducibility, and rigor in their review
process.
One of the most challenging aspects of writing a literature review protocol is defining the scope and
objectives of the review. This requires careful consideration of the research question, inclusion and
exclusion criteria, and the desired outcomes of the review. Additionally, researchers must identify
relevant databases, search terms, and data extraction methods to ensure a comprehensive and
unbiased analysis of the literature.
Crafting a systematic literature review protocol also entails conducting a thorough literature search
to identify relevant studies. This involves searching multiple databases, screening titles and abstracts,
and retrieving full-text articles for further evaluation. Furthermore, researchers must assess the
quality of included studies and synthesize the findings in a clear and concise manner.
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Finding a good review can save you hours of searching and will give you a ready-made search
strategy to update or modify. Next, the chapter focuses on documenting the characteristics of
included studies and summarizing findings, extracting data, methods for assessing risk of bias and
considering heterogeneity, and undertaking meta-analyses. Fifth, situate your own research within
the current literature in your field. Similarly, the number of included articles has to be stated before
addition to the overall included records. Why is global harmony in AI regulations challenging. What
types of systematic literature reviews are there. The articles and books related to SRMA focus
primarily on techniques, but not practices, necessitating the need for a strong background in fields
such as mathematics, statistics and computer science. We proposed our methods according to a valid
explanatory simulation example choosing the topic of “evaluating safety of Ebola vaccine,” as it is
known that Ebola is a very rare tropical disease but fatal. Dwan K, Gamble C, Williamson PR,
Kirkham JJ, Reporting Bias Group. What’s the wider goal for the work you’ll be doing? 3. This does
not including time for review, revision and publication. To minimize the potential for bias in the
review process, these judgements should be made as far as possible in ways that do not depend on
the findings of the studies included in the review. Systematic review of the empirical evidence of
study publication bias and outcome reporting bias: an updated review. A systematic review uses
specific procedures to locate, evaluate and synthesize the results of relevant research to address your
research question. The essence of a systematic review lies in being systematic. We describe here
three consecutive methods to increase and refine the yield of manual searching: firstly, searching
reference lists of included articles; secondly, performing what is known as citation tracking in which
the reviewers track all the articles that cite each one of the included articles, and this might involve
electronic searching of databases; and thirdly, similar to the citation tracking, we follow all “related
to” or “similar” articles. Hence, it is considered the second worst Ebola outbreak, after the first one
in West Africa in 2014, which infected more than 26,000 and killed about 11,300 people along
outbreak course. Identify your research question A well defined research question should address a
gap in the current literature and is the essential starting point of your synthesis. In your notes, be sure
to record each author’s thesis, methodology, strengths, limitations, and significant findings in
addition to relevant information you can use in an essay. A minimum of two reviewers perform a
first-stage screening of titles and abstracts based on the research question and the study design,
population, intervention and outcome to be studied. Chichester, UK,: Wiley Rutter CM, Gatsonis
CA (2001) A hierarchical regression approach to meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy
evaluations. The PRISMA checklist The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and
Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) is a 27-item checklist used to improve transparency in systematic reviews.
The PRISMA flow diagram The PRISMA Flow Diagram visually depicts the flow of studies through
each phase of the review process. Cochrane Reviews use primary research to generate new
knowledge about the effects of an intervention (or interventions) used in clinical, public health or
policy settings. They sometimes cover issues high on the political agenda and receive attention from
the media. You’ll need to discuss the studies and assess their overall quality. It answers a clearly
formulated research question and explicitly states the methods used to arrive at the answer. One of
the many concerns that must be addressed when performing a meta-analysis is whether selective
publication of studies could lead to a bias in estimating the overall meta-analytical effect and in the
inferences derived from the analysis. An annotated bibliography might suffice for a literature review.
Let’s consider systematic and literature reviews side-by-side to understand how systematic reviews
are unique.
Systematic literature reviews can be utilized in various contexts, but they’re often relied on in clinical
or healthcare settings. They offer the opportunity for authors to make authoritative statements about
the extent of human knowledge in important areas and to identify priorities for further research.
Quantitative: Use statistical methods to summarize and compare data from different studies. The
purpose of this section is to provide enough detail to enable other researchers to replicate the review.
Analysis of diagnostic (or screening) test accuracy. Your protocol should include the following
components: Background information: Provide the context of the research question, including why
it’s important. We propose an independent reviewing by assigning each member of the teams a “tag”
and a distinct method, to compile all the results at the end for comparison of differences and
discussion and to maximize the retrieval and minimize the bias. You should formulate a “well-built
clinical question.” This is the process of generating a good search question. Registering your
systematic literature review Before writing your systematic literature review, you can register it with
OSF for additional guidance along the way. The available protocol registries for systematic reviews
are. We recommend that an expert on the subject of the review review the issues still in the protocol
construction phase. Use specific authors or sources as examples, and be sure to explain any
similarities or departures in approach, methodology, findings, or argument. Sensitivity analysis is a
procedure used to discover how different values of an independent variable will influence the
significance of a particular dependent variable by removing one study from MA. Click to view the
step-by-step explanation of review update portion of the PRISMA flow diagram Step 1: Preparation
Download the flow diagram template version 2 PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for updated systematic
reviews which included searches of databases and registers only or the version 2 PRISMA 2020 flow
diagram for updated systematic reviews which included searches of databases, registers and other
sources. This guide frequently references the Cochrane Handbook. The kinds of questions you'll
come up with are: Were the participants really randomly allocated to their groups. SPIDER (Sample,
Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type) was proposed as a method for
qualitative and mixed methods search. For this, we apply inclusion and exclusion criteria defined in
the protocol to obtain the final list of primary studies that will be considered in the review. PICO is
usually used for systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trial study. Exclusion criteria are as
follows: (1) study of Ebola vaccine in non-human subjects or in vitro studies; (2) study with data not
reliably extracted, duplicate, or overlapping data; (3) abstract-only papers as preceding papers,
conference, editorial, and author response theses and books; (4) articles without available full text
available; and (5) case reports, case series, and systematic review studies. The methodology followed
should be explained clearly and logically. However, a more promising way of starting a research
project would be to not only have a topic, scope and a rough question in mind. Put simply, a
systematic review is a study of studies that is popular in medical and healthcare research. To find
government reports or similar texts, you may even have to go to the organization’s website and
search directly among their publication lists. The first step in a meta-analysis is to find all of the
pertinent articles on your topic. The ordering of the databases depends mostly on the review
questions; being in a study of clinical trials, you will rely mostly on Cochrane, mRCTs, or
International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). The objective remains strictly in relation with
validity and reliability of the review. You may already have a clear scope of what your research is
about and what is expected to be included and excluded in your project. Consider how each source
approaches your topic in addition to their collective points of intersection and separation. Often you
will need to use a modified and simplified search strategy to search for grey material.
Furthermore, there are other types rather than the standard MA like NMA and MA. The inclusion
criteria would be articles with the target patients, investigated interventions, or the comparison
between two studied interventions. There has been great growth in this kind of analysis in several
fields in recent years, particularly in medicine. This is one reason why non-content experts such as
methodologists should be part of the review team (see Section 1.3 ). Two exceptions to the
retrospective nature of a systematic review are a meta-analysis of a prospectively planned series of
trials and some living systematic reviews, as described in Chapter 22. When the outcome is
something bad, like death, the intervention should be designed to reduce the risk, which is
represented by a risk ratio less than 1. Fifth, situate your own research within the current literature in
your field. Methodology systematic reviews can be carried out to analyze any methodological issues
in the design, conduct, or review of research studies. Trials 8: 16 Whiting P, Rutjes AW, Reitsma JB,
Bossuyt PM, Kleijnen J (2003) The development of QUADAS: a tool for the quality assessment of
studies of diagnostic accuracy included in systematic reviews. They’re often used to complement, or
in the absence of, quantitative data. Systematic Literature Review Of Templates For Reporting
Literature review template the following is a simple pattern to follow for writing up your systematic
literature review. Develop a Research Question After finalizing your research question but before you
start your search, you need to define your inclusion and exclusion criteria. All point estimates fall to
the left of the line of no effect ( 1 would mean the risk was higher among the intervention group,
thus favoring the control group (with no treatment). Sections of a Scientific Manuscript Scientific
articles often follow the IMRaD format: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Publication
bias funnel plot for comparison of vaccine A versus placebo Looking at the funnel plot, the number
of studies at the left and right side of the funnel plot is the same; therefore, the plot is symmetry,
indicating no publication bias detected. Graduate student theses are an important type of gray
literature, which you can search using the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
(NDLTD). Using the full text, a second-stage screening is performed by at least two reviewers. On
the other hand, mega MA or MA of patients tend to summarize the results of independent studies by
using its individual subject data. Steps for the systematic review We can summarize the stages of a
literature review into three phases: Planning the Review, Conducting the Review, and Reporting the
Review. Furthermore, there are other types rather than the standard MA like NMA and MA. The
selected research question must remain connected to the former publication. PRISMA 2020
Checklists Download the 2020 PRISMA Checklists in Word or PDF formats or download the
expanded checklist (PDF). Module 1: Introduction to conducting systematic reviews. Registering
your protocol is a good way to announce that you are working on a review, so that others do not start
working on it. Third, identify patterns in approaches to your topic. Additionally, exploring archives
of wanted journals, or contacting PI to purchase it if available. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic
Reviews of Interventions This handbook provides detailed guidance on conducting a Cochrane
systematic review, however is a valuable resource for all authors, Systematic Reviews of Health
Promotion and Public Health Interventions (Cochrane Collaboration) Guidelines specific to advising
and supporting systematic reviews of health promotion and public health interventions within the
Cochrane Collaboration. A meta-analysis of clinical studies on the caries-inhibiting effect of fluoride
gel treatment. Can physical activity interventions for adults with type 2 diabetes be translated into
practice settings. Researchers should consider to choose relevant database according to the research
topic. The combined-effect estimate and its CI are represented by a diamond.