Systematic Reviews & Evidence Synthesis

Seven Starting Steps

Before you start the evidence synthesis process, you need to work through initial steps to identify project viability, scope, and type.

1. Team - Systematic reviews and most other evidence synthesis require a research team
2. Timeline - Evidence synthesis projects generally need 6-24 months to complete
3. Exploratory Searches - Locate existing and planned evidence synthesis reviews on the topic, "seed articles" for the review, and get a sense of the project's scope
4. Type - Select an evidence synthesis project type that matches your research goals, resources, and the available evidence
5. Tools - Identify tools including a citation manager, screening software, and text editing software that all team members can access
6. Guidelines - Identify both the appropriate methods and reporting guidelines for your project type
7. Publication - Identify a potential publication venue and their requirements

Graduate Students

If you're a graduate student thinking about a systematic review, scoping review, evidence map or other evidence synthesis project for your thesis/dissertation, identify your plan for dealing with these starting steps.

This guide is informed by materials created by Sadie Skeels (formerly at CSU) and the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guide from Cozette Comers and the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.

This work was developed by Anna Ferri (anna.ferri@colostate.edu) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License unless otherwise noted on a specific visual or other content item.

Did you use this guide or materials from it for teaching your class, lab team, research group or other people how to do an evidence synthesis project? Do you have a suggestion or did you notice a problem? Please let us know!