This section brings together a selection of key resources to support your learning and development in systematic searching. Whether you're new to systematic reviews or looking to refine your searching techniques, these books, online courses, and training materials offer practical guidance, evidence-based strategies, and expert insights.
Resources include:
Use these resources to deepen your understanding, build your skills, and approach your systematic search with confidence.
Doing a Systematic Review
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An Introduction to Systematic Reviews
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Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
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The following resources offer trusted guidance on developing systematic searches and conducting reviews across different disciplines
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
Health & Medicine | Quantitative Reviews | Search Strategy | General Methodology
The Cochrane Handbook is the gold standard for healthcare-related systematic reviews. It covers all steps from protocol development to risk of bias, meta-analysis, and dissemination.
Link: https://training.cochrane.org/handbook/current ; Full text available with UCC credentials
Social Sciences | Systematic Reviews | Evidence and Gap Maps | Scoping Reviews | Search Strategy | General Methodology
The Campbell Collaboration is the home for evidence synthesis across the whole of social policy and the social sciences. The Campbell Collaboration publishes systematic reviews in education, crime and justice, social welfare, and international development. Their guidelines cover search planning, screening, synthesis, and reporting.
Published on behalf of the Campbell Collaboration, Campbell Systematic Reviews is an open access journal publishing systematic reviews, evidence and gap maps, and methods research papers.
JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis 2024 Edition
Health & Medicine | Quantitative Reviews | Qualitative Reviews | General Methodology | Search Strategy
The Joanna Briggs Institute Manual supports a wide variety of review types, including scoping reviews, prevalence, text/opinion, and mixed-methods.
JBI is an international evidence-based healthcare organisation that works with Universities, Health Facilities and NGOs (known as the JBI Collaboration) worldwide. The organisation focuses on improving health outcomes globally by producing and disseminating research evidence, software, training, resources and publications relating to evidence-based healthcare.
The new edition of the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis guides authors who wish to conduct systematic and scoping reviews following JBI methodologies. Each chapter is devoted to the synthesis of different types of evidence to address different types of clinical and policy-related questions.
Link: https://jbi-global-wiki.refined.site/space/MANUAL ; https://doi.org/10.46658/JBIMES-24-01
Evidence-Based Software Engineering
Computing, Software Engineering, IT | Quantitative Reviews | Qualitative Reviews | Systematic Review Guidelines
Evidence-Based Software Engineering explains the basic concepts and processes, as well as providing guidelines for undertaking systematic reviews in computing, software engineering and IT
Business, Management & Leadership
Management and Leadership | Systematic Review Guidelines
The Center for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMa) is the leading authority on evidence-based practice in the field of management and leadership. They have created online learning modules for members and provide resources and tools to facilitate evidence-based management.
Denyer, D., & Tranfield, D. (2009). Producing a Systematic Review. In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Research Methods (pp. 671–690). SAGE.
Kraus, S., Breier, M. & Dasí-Rodríguez, S. (2020) The art of crafting a systematic literature review in entrepreneurship research. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal 16, 1023–1042. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-020-00635-4
Society for Conservation Biology
Conservation and Environmental Management | Systematic Review Guidelines
Pullin, A.S. and Steward, G.B. (2006), Guidelines for Systematic Review in Conservation and Environmental Management. Conservation Biology, 20: 1647-1656. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00485.x
Cochrane Interactive Learning is a series of high quality, online learning modules for conducting intervention reviews following Cochrane review methodology.
Self-directed Modules guide you through the whole process, from Introductions to conducting Systematic Reviews; Writing the Protocol; Searching for Studies; Analysing the data; Interpreting the findings, and Reporting the review.
Cochrane also provides a regular series of Webinars, free online learning events on a wide range of evidence topics.
You can view earlier webinars in the Library of Webinar Recordings
Access Cochrane Interactive learning via the Library A-Z database list
Reporting Standards | Search Strategy | Health & Medicine | Social Sciences
The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) reporting guidelines are designed to improve the reporting of systematic reviews. PRISMA assists authors to completely report why their systematic review was done, what methods they used, and what they found. The main PRISMA reporting guideline (the PRISMA 2020 statement) primarily provides guidance for the reporting of systematic reviews evaluating the effects of interventions. PRISMA 2020 is complemented by various PRISMA extensions, which provide guidance for the reporting of different types or aspects of systematic reviews and other types of evidence synthesis (e.g. scoping reviews).
Key PRISMA 2020 documents
Link: http://www.prisma-statement.org/ ; http://www.prisma-statement.org/
Reporting Standards | Social Sciences
The Campbell Standards are based on the MECCIR and the PRISMA-2020 reporting standards and include seven main sections with 35 items. All the items provided in the checklist are to be interpreted by authors as mandatory for a protocol, review, or update to be published in the Campbell Systematic Reviews journal.
Reporting Standards | Health & Medicine | Qualitative Evidence Synthesis
The ENTREQ statement can help researchers to report the stages most commonly associated with the synthesis of qualitative health research: searching and selecting qualitative research, quality appraisal, and methods for synthesising qualitative findings.
Reporting Standards | Environmental Sciences
Reporting standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses: ROSES is a collaborative initiative with the aim of improving the standards of reporting in evidence syntheses of environmental evidence.
