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Systematic Reviews

This guide explains the principles of systematic reviews and offers advice on getting started with your systematic literature search.

Steps in a systematic review

Systematic reviews were developed to help busy clinicians make sense of varied and often conflicting individual studies relating to a highly specific topic. The systematic review process created by the Cochrane Collaboration or the Joanna Briggs Institute follows specific steps to ensure rigor and reduce bias, working to create documents that can help guide healthcare decisions. The following sections describe the typical steps involved in conducting a systematic review.