You can find additional reporting guidelines here:
Using these frameworks can help you refine your question to make it appropriate for evidence synthesis methodology
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowSome publications will require pre-registration of a protocol, others will simply expect the protocol to be made available. The above repositories provide registration. The following can be used to make your protocol open and accessible without a registration.
A few, but not many, journals will even publish protocols. Here are a few of them.
The tools in this box are designed to walk researchers through the full evidence synthesis process.
Developing a systematic search strategy
Text Mining tools
Text mining tools can help identify additional key terms to include in a search strategy.
Supplementary searching is an umbrella term for a number of techniques to identify relevant studies outside of the systematic search strategy. These may include gray literature searches, hand searching within journals, searching for clinical trials, etc.
There are a number of different terms used for citation searching. You may hear it referred to as backward and forward citation searching, citation tracking, citation mining, snowballing, pearl growing, reference checking, or reference harvesting or any combination. We use "citation searching" in adherence to the TARCis recommendations. TARCiS provides guidance on conducting and reporting your citation search.
Regardless of the terminology used, the concept is the same. It involves searching the bibliographies of included studies and searching for newer articles that have cited your included studies to help identify additional relevant articles. Be aware, while these tools are helpful, none of them are 100% accurate in the results they return.
This link opens in a new windowClinical Trials
Additional sources of gray literature
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