Databases, Resources & Tools - Retired Guide - Systematic Review (SR) Service - MSK Library Guides at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Databases

The National Academies states that a common error is to rely solely on a limited number of bibliographic databases in conducting SRs. Below are some of the large well-known databases commonly searched for SRs. A librarian can recommend other sources relevant to your topic, including grey literature (conference proceedings and government documents, for example).

Canadian Agency For Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) Grey Matter
This open access resource is not exhaustive but is updated regularly to include content from Canadian and International Health Technology Assessment Agencie
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry and results database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world.
The Cochrane Library
Provides reliable and up-to-date information from seven different databases on the effects of interventions in healthcare. Published on a quarterly basis and designed to provide information and evidence to support decisions taken in healthcare and to inform those receiving care.
Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health (CINAHL)
This major indexing resource for nursing literature covering over 2,900 hundred English language nursing journals, as well as primary journals for the allied health disciplines. Abstracts are included for selected journal titles. The database also contains references to books, dissertations, selected conference proceedings, and standards of professional practice including publications of the American Nurses'Association and the National League for Nursing.
EMBASE
EMBASE.com is updated daily and contains biomedical and pharmacological information. This database allows you to search both EMBASE and unique MEDLINE records simultaneously. Duplicate references are automatically removed and will not appear in search results. Subject areas covered include Drug Research; Pharmacology; Pharmaceutics; Pharmacy; Side Effects, Interactions and Toxicology.
Epistemonikos
A collaborative, multilingual database of health evidence containing systematic reviews relevant for health-decision making, and a large source of other types of scientific evidence. This database is aimed at health professionals, researchers and health decision-makers.
Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI)
Provides information about articles on questionnaires, interview schedules, checklists, index measures, coding schemes and manuals, rating scales, and other measurement instruments in the fields of health, psychosocial sciences, organizational behavior, and library and information science. This database is updated quarterly and links to full text articles (Fulltext@MSK).
MeSH Browser
This tool allows for searches of MeSH terms, text-word searches of the Annotation and Scope Note, and searches of various fields for chemicals.
MeSH on Demand
This resource identifies MeSH terms in your text using the NLM Medical Text Indexer (MTI) program. The results provided by MeSH on Demand are a simple list of MeSH Terms that MTI identifies as being relevant to your text. Each of the identified MeSH Terms has a link to the corresponding MeSH Browser Web page for that MeSH Term. Can be a helpful tool in determining controlled vocabulary to use within your systematic review search strategy.
Open Access Theses Dissertations
Good resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Content comes from many colleges, universities, and research institutions. See list of sites that contribute records: http://oatd.org/oatd-publishers.html
PsycINFO
Covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, management, business, social sciences, neuroscience, law and social work. Coverage is worldwide and includes references and abstracts to over 2,000 journals, dissertations, book chapters and books in the English language.
PubMed
PubMed is a search service of the National Library of Medicine. It includes references from MEDLINE and MEDLINE in Process, as well as a small number of references not included in these databases. It features built-in search filters for diagnosis, therapy, etiology, and prognosis and includes links to databanks of DNA/protein sequence and 3-D structure data.
SRDR+ (Systematic Review Data Repository)
This open source repository serves as an archive and data extraction tool, and facilitate evidence reviews. Registration is required.
Web of Science
Two citation databases. Science Citation Index Expanded includes about 5,900 major journals across 150 scientific disciplines on biology; medicine; legal medicine; chemistry; cell biology; microbiology; medical informatics; oncology, psychiatry; toxicology; pharmacology and pharmacy; and physics. Social Sciences Citation Index covers about 1,725 journals across 50 social sciences disciplines on geriatrics and gerontology; health policy and services; nursing; rehabilitation; public health.

Systematic Reviews: Standards, Guidelines & Resources

AHRQ - Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
AHRQ offers practical, research-based tools and other resources to help a variety of health care organizations, providers, and others make care safer in all health care settings.
CEBD: Centre For Evidence Based Dentistry
Based in the UK, this organization was established in 1995 and is an independent body whose aim is to promote the teaching, learning, practice and evaluation of evidence-based dentistry world-wide. This page provides an overview of the Systematic Review process.
Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology
This Centre based at The University of Edinburgh provides a systematic reviews and meta-analyses step by step guide which is based on guidance from the Cochrane Collaboration and the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at York.
Cochrane Handbook For Systematic Reviews of Interventions, Version 6.3, 2022
This edition of the Handbook is divided into four parts. The first section (available only online) addresses issues specific to working with Cochrane. The second describes the core methods applicable to systematic reviews of interventions, from framing the question through to interpreting the results. The third and fourth parts address specific perspectives and methodological issues that are relevant to some, though not all, reviews, such as non-randomized studies, qualitative evidence and economics evidence.
CRD's Guidance for Undertaking Reviews in Health Care
This is the third edition of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) guidance for undertaking systematic reviews in health care. CRD is part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and is a department of the University of York.
EQUATOR
Organization that brings together researchers, medical journal editors, peer reviewers, developers of reporting guidelines, research funding bodies and other collaborators with mutual interest in improving the quality of research publications and of research itself.
Finding Out What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews, from the National Academies Press
A 2011 consensus report, reflecting the views and recommendations of the authors.
MeSH Analyzer (Yale)
A bookmark tool for your browser that simplifies the creation of a MeSH analysis grid. A MeSH analysis grid can help identify the problems in a search strategy by presenting the ways articles are indexed in the MEDLINE database in an easy-to-scan tabular format. Creating a MeSH analysis grid manually is a tedious, time-consuming task. Metadata for each article must be manually retrieved, extracted, and pasted into a grid, and then the MeSH terms must be manually sorted and grouped alphabetically.
Methods Guide for Medical Test Reviews
In an effort to improve the transparency, consistency, and scientific rigor of the work of the Effective Health Care (EHC) Program, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Scientific Resource Center, and the Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs), have developed this textbook to serve as a resource for the EPCs as well as for other investigators interested in conducting systematic reviews on medical tests.
PRESS Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies: 2015 Guideline Explanation & Elaboration
The PRESS Guideline provides a set of recommendations concerning the information that should be used by librarians and other information specialists when they are asked to evaluate these electronic search strategies. This guideline updates and expands upon the 2008 CADTH report PRESS: Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies, as well as An Evidence Based Checklist for the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies (PRESS EBC), published in the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice journal in 2010.
PRISMA 2020
Evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses; primarily focuses on the reporting of reviews evaluating the effects of interventions, but can also be used as a basis for reporting systematic reviews with objectives other than evaluating interventions (e.g. prevalence, diagnosis or prognosis).
The PRISMA 2020 Statement An Updated Guideline For Reporting Systematic Reviews
Learn more about the updated guideline, view video presentation (1:04:03).
PROSPERO
International prospective register of systematic reviews. This site includes protocol details for systematic reviews relevant to health and social care, welfare, public health, education, crime, justice, and international development, where there is a health related outcome.
Why prospective registration of systematic reviews makes sense (Published: 09 Feb 2012)
This editorial supports why develop and registering your systematic review protocol is important.
RAMESES - Realist and Meta-Narrative Evidence Synthesis Evolving Standards
Realist and meta-narrative review are relatively new approaches to systematic review whose overall place in the secondary research toolkit is not yet fully established. As with all secondary research methods, guidance on quality assurance and uniform reporting is an important step towards improving quality and consistency of studies.
RLO: Steps in Conducting a Systematic Review
From the School of Nursing and Academic Division of Midwifery, University of Nottingham, this page provides an overview for conducting a systematic review.
Systematic Reviews
This journal encompasses all aspects of the design, conduct and reporting of systematic reviews and aims to publish high quality systematic review products including systematic review protocols, systematic reviews related to a very broad definition of health, rapid reviews, updates of already completed systematic reviews, and methods research related to the science of systematic reviews, such as decision modeling.
Systematic Reviews: CRD's guidance for undertaking reviews in health care (Jan 2009)
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Systematic Review Toolbox
Community-driven resource and a searchable web-based catalogue of tools that support the systematic review process across multiple domains. Aims to help reviewers find appropriate tools based on how they provide support for the systematic review process. Users can perform a simple keyword search (e.g. Quick Search) to locate tools, or a more detailed search (e.g. Advanced Search) allowing the selection of various criteria to find specific types of tools or submit new tools to the database.
The effect of English-language restriction on systematic review-based meta-analyses: a systematic review of empirical studies (2012)
Impact of language on systematic reviews.
English-Language Restriction When Conducting Systematic Review-based Meta-analyses: Systematic Review of Published Studies (Feb 2009)
Authored by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health. Impact of language on systematic reviews.

Tools

Covidence is a tool that we have integrated within our Systematic Review Service. Our goal is to support our users, improve efficiency for the systematic review team, and reduce the time required to produce a systematic review.

ACCESSING COVIDENCE
You can create your personal sign-in information with Covidence before or after joining the institutional subscription. To request access to the institutional account in Covidence, you must use your current MSK email address. If you have already joined the MSK Library’s Covidence account, then you can log into Covidence with your email and password and start using this reference review management tool right away!

Helpful tips and tools for getting started. Learn about systematic reviews and how to use this application from Covidence Academy.

AMSTAR - Acronym stands for A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews

Rayyan - An application developed at Qatar Computing Research Institute which aids systematic review authors in performing their research in a quick and easy fashion. Authors can collaborate together to determine papers that will be included/excluded and label articles. There is no cost associated with this tool.

ROBIS - Tool for assessing the risk of bias in systematic reviews (rather than in primary studies) and is currently aimed at four broad categories of reviews mainly within healthcare settings: interventions, diagnosis, prognosis and aetiology. The target audience for this tool is primarily guideline developers, authors of overviews of systematic reviews (“reviews of reviews”) and review authors who might want to assess or avoid risk of bias in their reviews.tool designed specifically to assess the risk of bias in systematic reviews. To learn more about this resource, review the 2016 publication in the Journal of Epidemiology entitled "ROBIS: A new tool to assess risk of bias in systematic reviews was developed."

Memorial Sloan Kettering Library

Retired Guide - Systematic Review (SR) Service: Databases, Resources & Tools

This Guide Has Been Retired

Databases

Systematic Reviews: Standards, Guidelines & Resources

Tools