Skip to Main Content

Systematic Reviews

A guide for planning and conducting systematic reviews and other types of evidence synthesis.

Planning for a Review

Planning and preparation are essential for the successful conduct of a systematic review.

Assembling a Team: 

Ensure that you have a sufficient team for conducting a review, and establish roles and responsibilities:

  • Principal Investigator/Subject Matter Expert, Methodologist, Project Manager, Two Reviewers, Arbiter, Informationist
  • If conducting a meta-analysis: Biostatistician

Estimating the Time for the Review 

A systematic review may take a year or longer to complete.

Cochrane suggests a 1-year timeline, with each step taking a month or longer:

 Month  Step
1 - 2  Preparation of protocol
3 - 8  Searches for published and unpublished studies
2 - 3  Pilot test of eligibility criteria
3 - 8 Inclusion assessments
3  Pilot test of 'Risk of bias' assessment
3 - 10  Validity assessments
3  Pilot test of data collection
3 - 10 Data collection
3 - 10 Data entry
5 - 11 Follow up of missing information
8 - 10 Analysis
1 - 11 Preparation of review report
12 -  Keeping the review up-tp-date


To estimate how long it will take to conduct your review, try the PredicTER tool.