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. 2023 Sep 2;12(1):156.
doi: 10.1186/s13643-023-02325-y.

How to update a living systematic review and keep it alive during a pandemic: a practical guide

Leonie Heron  1 , Diana Buitrago-Garcia  1   2 , Aziz Mert Ipekci  1 , Rico Baumann  1 , Hira Imeri  1   3 , Georgia Salanti  1 , Michel Jacques Counotte  4 , Nicola Low  5
Affiliations

How to update a living systematic review and keep it alive during a pandemic: a practical guide

Leonie Heron et al. Syst Rev. .

Abstract

Background: The covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the role of living systematic reviews. The speed of evidence generated during the covid-19 pandemic accentuated the challenges of managing high volumes of research literature.

Methods: In this article, we summarise the characteristics of ongoing living systematic reviews on covid-19, and we follow a life cycle approach to describe key steps in a living systematic review.

Results: We identified 97 living systematic reviews on covid-19, published up to 7th November 2022, which focused mostly on the effects of pharmacological interventions (n = 46, 47%) or the prevalence of associated conditions or risk factors (n = 30, 31%). The scopes of several reviews overlapped considerably. Most living systematic reviews included both observational and randomised study designs (n = 45, 46%). Only one-third of the reviews has been updated at least once (n = 34, 35%). We address practical aspects of living systematic reviews including how to judge whether to start a living systematic review, methods for study identification and selection, data extraction and evaluation, and give recommendations at each step, drawing from our own experience. We also discuss when it is time to stop and how to publish updates.

Conclusions: Methods to improve the efficiency of searching, study selection, and data extraction using machine learning technologies are being developed, their performance and applicability, particularly for reviews based on observational study designs should improve, and ways of publishing living systematic reviews and their updates will continue to evolve. Finally, knowing when to end a living systematic review is as important as knowing when to start.

Keywords: Covid-19; Epidemiology; Public health; Research design.

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Conflict of interest statement

NL declares that her institution has received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (176233) and the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme — project EpiPose (grant agreement number 101003688). The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Monthly new records on SARS-CoV-2 or covid-19 from January 2020 to February 2022. Number of new records from five electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, PsychINFO, bioRxiv, and medRxiv)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Life cycle of a living systematic review
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Annotated screenshot of the R Shiny application used for the selection process. The RShiny application was developed for the reviewing team of the living systematic review on asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections to screen and verify articles
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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