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Systematic Review Process
- Define a focused and relevant research question.
- Conduct a preliminary search to determine whether there are any existing systematic reviews that already address your research question. We suggest searching the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PROSPERO, and PubMed with an appropriate systematic review filter, e.g. systematic[sb].
- Assemble a project team.
- Write a review protocol specifying your plan for conducting the review. It should include the rationale for the review, objectives of the review, inclusion/exclusion criteria, methods for locating studies, quality assessment methods, data extraction methods, data synthesis/meta-analysis methods, etc.
- Register your protocol with PROSPERO, Systematic Reviews, or other appropriate entity.
- Search for studies.
- Screen titles and abstracts to identify potentially relevant studies.
- Review full-text and apply inclusion and exclusion criteria.
- Assess quality of eligible studies.
- Extract data from individual studies.
- Analyze data (and synthethize if appropriate).
- Report findings.