Systematic Review Service

Congratulations! You are ready to write and publish your review. Here are some important things to keep in mind:

• Follow reporting standards. Many journals require you to submit a PRISMA Checklist with your manuscript, and you should prepare one even if yours does not require it. Remember that there are PRISMA extensions for scoping reviews, abstracts, and specific disciplines. The PRISMA Checklist is a template for the content that goes in each section of your manuscript.
• Follow the author instructions of the target journal. If you looked at these before starting your review process, you should be in good shape. 
• Use your protocol. Save time! The protocol text should be reflected in the full manuscript, especially the introduction and methods sections.
• Remember to include supplemental information. PRISMA requires the inclusion of the full search strategies for each database, and a list of seemingly relevant but excluded studies. Have these and all other supplements ready as appendices at submission.

Your MSK librarian MUST be included in the final review of your manuscript before it is submitted to a journal or conference.

While working on your manuscript, keep in mind you will need to address a few things for the Core Grant, which is how MSK refers to P30 CA008748. This is the P30 Cancer Center Support Grant that provides the entire institution with funding.

To be compliant with the Core Grant, all peer-reviewed publications by MSK faculty or employees must:

1. Acknowledge P30 CA008748 in the funding acknowledgements.
2. Be deposited in PubMed Central (PMC) and assigned a PMCID.
3. Be properly associated with P30 CA008748 in MyNCBI/My Bibliography.

For the second part above, it is important you mention this to your publisher before publication, as to deposit into PMC via the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system requires addressing any copyright issues beforehand. Also, note that the author-accepted manuscript is the version required for deposit into PMC.

If you have any questions about compliance with the Core Grant, see the NIH Public Access Policy guide.

Your MSK librarian will share documentation, including the search strategy and number of results for each database, that the team will reference when writing the manuscript. However, be sure to send your manuscript to your MSK librarian for review prior to its submission to a journal or conference. They will check that the methods, PRISMA Flow Diagram numbers, and searches in the supplemental information are accurate and complete.

The MSK Library also offers a number of resources to authors looking to publish, including tools that help identify target journals. Learn more on our Support for Authors guide. Reach out to the MSK librarian on your team for project-specific journal advice. 

Covidence creates a PRISMA Flow Diagram for you, along with other data you can download and report in your publication.