Table 3 Recommendations for conducting a living systematic review, by stage of the review life cycle
From: How to update a living systematic review and keep it alive during a pandemic: a practical guide
Establishing a living systematic review | • Initiate a living systematic review only when the topic is a priority for decision-making and the evidence is uncertain and/or is changing quickly • Estimate the time needed to conduct and update the living systematic review realistically • Anticipate increasing numbers of records to screen with successive updates |
Publishing a protocol | • Publish and register a protocol before starting the living systematic review • Explicitly state the conditions for ending the living systematic review • Document changes in a new protocol version before starting the next update |
Setting up and managing the review team | • The team should have appropriate subject area and methodological and technical expertise • Consider crowdsourcing volunteers to help with time-intensive tasks that require less content expertise |
Study identification | • Automate searches, e.g. by using statistical software and application programme interface (APIs) to communicate with online database aggregators • Store and manage identified records in a secure, online electronic database |
Study selection and data collection | • Use software tools (e.g. Covidence, REDCap surveys) to organise and facilitate screening records • Combine screening of titles and abstracts and full texts into one step • Use text classifiers to automatically exclude ineligible articles, if appropriate |
Data synthesis | • Synthesise the data using statistical software that can connect to an electronic database • Create reproducible documents, tables, and/or figures to quickly update results when new studies are included • Consider statistical issues associated with multiple updates |
Publishing the results | • Publish updates first as preprints and then as open-access, peer-reviewed publications • Choose an appropriate platform (i.e. journal, preprint server, or website) that makes the version of the review clear • Consider a living systematic review website for sharing updates |
Ending a living systematic review | • Decide on and state criteria for ending the living systematic review in the review protocol |