In collaboration with the University Medical Library, we offer methodological and statistical support in all phases of your project.

1. Your Team & Funding

In addition to content experts, international standards and handbooks recommend the inclusion of other experts into the review team, namely methodologists, information specialists, and statisticians. For systematic review authors who are planning to work with us, we and the University Medical Library also offer support for grant applications, e.g. by performing a scoping search.

2. Developing Your Research Question

We and the University Medical Library offer support for defining a precise research question (e.g. following the population-intervention-control-outcome scheme). We also help identifying systematic reviews and systematic review protocols that are relevant to your topic.

3. Choosing a Review Type & Registering Your Protocol

We offer support for selecting a suitable type of review (e.g. systematic review, scoping review, rapid review). Reporting guidelines encourage the registration of systematic review protocols (e.g. according to Prisma-P). We support registrations in the PROSPERO Systematic Review Protocol Registry.

4. Searching & Search Management

Services offered:

• Searching bibliographic databases (Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, Cinahl, PsycInfo, Web of Science etc.)
• Searching in clinical trials registries (e.g. ClinicalTrials.gov) and for gray literature
• Citation chasing (snowball-techniques)
• Export to EndNote and deduplication of results

5. Screening & Documentation

We and the University Medical Library offer help with the initial screening of results (title, abstract) and the documentation of the review process.

6. Appraising the Quality, Risk of Bias & Synthesizing the Evidence

We offer help with quality appraisal, risk of bias, descriptive or statistical evaluation (meta-analysis), and data interpretation.

7. Publishing

Depending on what we supported you with, we write the corresponding sections in the Methods and Results according to PRISMA.