University Library: Evidence Synthesis Service: Protocols and Standards

Standards and Guidelines for Conducting Evidence Synthesis

Campbell Collaboration - Campbell Systematic Reviews
The Campbell Collaboration is an international network publishing high quality, transparent and policy-relevant evidence syntheses and maps in the social sectors. Campbell is also a leading actor in evidence synthesis methods, producing guides and discussion papers for researchers interested in the field of methodology and evidence synthesis generally.
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions is the official guide that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions.
Collaboration for Environmental Evidence - Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management
The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) is an open community of stakeholders working towards a sustainable global environment and the conservation of biodiversity. CEE seeks to promote and deliver evidence syntheses on issues of greatest concern to environmental policy and practice as a public service.
Institute of Medicine - Finding What Works in Healthcare: Standards for Systematic Reviews
In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain.
Joanna Briggs Institute - JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis
The JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis is designed to provide authors with a comprehensive guide to conducting JBI systematic reviews. It describes in detail the process of planning, undertaking and writing up a systematic review using JBI methods.
Evidence Based Software Engineering - Guidelines for Performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering
This report provides comprehensive guidelines for systematic literature reviews appropriate for software engineering researchers. The guidelines cover three phases of a systematic literature review: planning the review, conducting the review and reporting the review.

Reporting Guidelines

Several reporting standards exist for evidence syntheses. These can serve as guidelines for protocol and manuscript preparation and journals may require that these standards are followed for the review type that is being employed (e.g. systematic review, scoping review, etc).

PRISMA Checklist
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) is an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
PRISMA-P
PRISMA reporting guidelines for protocol development
PRISMA-S
PRISMA reporting guidelines for literature searching
PRISMA-ScR
PRISMA reporting guidelines for scoping reviews and evidence maps
EQUATOR Network
Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Research (EQUATOR) provides a list of various standards for reporting in systematic reviews, including PRISMA standards and more.

Where to Publish Your Protocol

A first step to organizing the review is creating and registering a protocol. The protocol describes the rationale, hypotheses, and planned methods for the review. Protocols reduce bias and improve consistency between review team members. It can used as a template to guide the review process. Protocols may be a requirement for publication by some journals. Some options for registering/publishing your protocol are below.

PROSPERO
Disciplines: Health and Social Care, Welfare, Public Health, Education, Crime, Justice, and International Development
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. (Does not accept scoping reviews)
Open Science Framework
Disciplines: All
An open source, multidisciplinary web application that connects and supports the research workflow. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data. OSF can be used to pre-register a systematic review protocol and to share documents such as a Zotero library, search strategies, and data extraction forms. Unlike other registries, evidence synthesis author teams do not submit their protocols for review by an editorial board before they are accepted and pre-registered on OSF. Instead, create your own pre-registration.

Adapted from the Cornell University Library Evidence Synthesis LibGuide

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Evidence Synthesis Service

Evidence Synthesis Protocol Template

Standards and Guidelines for Conducting Evidence Synthesis

Reporting Guidelines

Where to Publish Your Protocol

Florida Gulf Coast University Library