This scoping review aims to identify and systematically review published mapping reviews to assess their commonality and heterogeneity and determine whether additional efforts should be made to standardise methodology and reporting. The following databases were searched; Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Campbell collaboration database,…

Cochrane reviews are known to be a high-quality source of evidence synthesis supporting health care decisions. In a recently conducted study, we analyzed the trends in epidemiology and reporting of published systematic reviews over the last 20 years. This sample of 1132 systematic reviews included 84 Cochrane reviews. We have learned several…

Systematic searches are integral to identifying the evidence that is used in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) public health guidelines (PHGs). This study analyses the sources, including bibliographic databases and other techniques, required for PHGs. The aims were to analyse the sources used to identify the publications…

The Systematic Review Toolbox aims provide a web-based catalogue of tools that support various tasks within the systematic review and wider evidence synthesis process. Identifying publications surrounding specific systematic review tools is currently challenging, leading to a high screening burden for few eligible records. We aimed to develop a…

The Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register (CCSR) is a public, continually updated database of COVID-19 study references. The aim of this study-based register is to support rapid and living evidence synthesis, including an evidence ecosystem of COVID-19 research (CEOsys). In November and December 2020, we conducted an evaluation of the CCSR for CEOsys,…

Rigorous evidence identification is essential for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (evidence syntheses) because the sample selection of relevant studies determines a review's outcome, validity, and explanatory power. Yet, the search systems allowing access to this evidence provide varying levels of precision, recall, and reproducibility and…

Effect direction (evidence to indicate improvement, deterioration, or no change in an outcome) can be used as a standardized metric which enables the synthesis of diverse effect measures in systematic reviews. The effect direction (ED) plot was developed to support the synthesis and visualization of effect direction data. Methods for the ED plot…

Background: Forwards citation searching is a valuable method for finding relevant studies in reviews where concepts are not clearly defined. Scopus and Web of Science can both be used for forwards citation searching but there is little evidence comparing the resources for this purpose. Method: 104 source records relevant to a scoping review of…

Background: There is an agreement that the methodological quality of randomized trials should be assessed in systematic reviews, but there is a debate on how this should be done. We conducted a construct validation study of the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) scale, which is widely used to assess the quality of trials in physical therapy…

Driven by necessity in our own complex review, we developed alternative systematic ways of identifying relevant evidence where the key concepts are generally not focal to the primary studies' aims and are found across multiple disciplines--that is, hard-to-detect evidence. Specifically, we sought to identify evidence on community engagement in…

Background: The scoping review has become an increasingly popular approach for synthesizing research evidence. It is a relatively new approach for which a universal study definition or definitive procedure has not been established. The purpose of this scoping review was to provide an overview of scoping reviews in the literature. Methods: A…