Systematic Review & Evidence Synthesis Information Guide (UAHSL-Tucson)

This guide contains information and resources that may be helpful if you are planning to do a systematic review or scoping review.

Students, staff, and faculty with primary appointments at the University of Arizona in College of Medicine-Tucson, College of Nursing, R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy, Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, School of Nutritional Sciences and Wellness as well as Banner UMC-Tucson Residents and Fellows are eligible for support from HSL librarians.

Contact a Librarian

Students and faculty in COM-Phoenix should contact staff at the Phoenix Biomedical Library.  Students and faculty in UA colleges outside of the designated Health Sciences ones listed above should contact Elizabeth Kline at klinee@arizona.edu.

Evidence syntheses projects (including systematic and scoping reviews) are labor intensive.  

Writing the systematic review protocol may take 2-6 months and completing and writing a systematic review may take 1-2 years.( Cochrane Collaboration, Cochrane Community, Review Production. Time and Commitment.)  

A study of registered systematic review protocols found that the mean time taken to complete a systematic review was 1.5 years. (Borah, R., Brown, A., Capers, P., & Kaiser, K. (2017). Analysis of the time and workers needed to conduct systematic reviews of medical interventions using data from the PROSPERO registry. BMJ Open, 7(2), E012545.)

A study on scoping reviews found a mean time of 5.2 months to complete a scoping review, while the high of the range was over 1.5 years.  (Pham, M., Rajić, A., Greig, J., Sargeant, J., Papadopoulos, A., & McEwen, S. (2014). A scoping review of scoping reviews: Advancing the approach and enhancing the consistency. Research Synthesis Methods, 5(4), 371-385.)

It takes a team to complete a review.  Learn more about who should be on the team for systematic reviews: National Academies Recommended Standards for Organizing the Review Team.