Systematic Reviews: Finding and Appraising Systematic Reviews
A Guide to Conducting Systematic Reviews
Appraising Systematic Reviews
Just because a review has been published as a "systematic review", it does not imply that the review was rigorous, reproducible or exhaustive. There are a number of criteria by which you can assess the quality of a systematic review. Below are the two most common tools used for this purpose.
Finding Existing Systematic Reviews
Searching for existing systematic reviews on a topic related to your own research question can be a good place to start. These systematic reviews may provide a model for approaching your own review of the literature, including recommended search strategies and resources. The following are links to online libraries of systematic reviews and evidence documents for health and other areas of policy-making.
- Cochrane LibrarySearch here for published Cochrane systematic reviews.
- PubMed HealthA resource for systematic reviews provided by the National Library of Medicine including Cochrane's DARE database.
- Joanna Briggs LibraryFor systematic reviews published by the Joanna Briggs Institute.
- PROSPEROA registry for prospective systematic reviews.
- TRIP DatabaseA searchable evidence library--allows searching by PICO.
- Campbell CollaborationCheck here for published reviews and protocols by the Campbell Collaboration, which focuses on reviews outside of clinical medicine.
- HealthEvidence.orgFor systematic reviews on public health interventions.
- EpistemonikosAn evidence library for decision in health care and health policy.
- 3iE DatabaseInternational Impact for Impact Evaluations: for policymakers and researchers who are looking for evidence on what works, what doesn’t, and why in development.
- The Community GuideThe Community Guide conducts systematic reviews of interventions in many topic areas to learn what works to promote public health.
- EPPI-CentreThe Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) conducts systematic reviews in the fields of Education, Health Promotion and Public Health, as well as social welfare and international development.
- The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE)The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) is an open community of scientists and managers working towards a sustainable global environment and the conservation of biodiversity.
- DiscoveryYou can search any scholarly database that published research in your field of interest. Include "systematic review" as a search term to find systematic reviews in your discipline.