Journal Article

Resource use during systematic review production varies widely: a scoping review

Riva, N., Thomas, J., Kontogiani, M., Baladia, E., Berg, R.C., Silva, A.G., Sousa, M., Poulentzas, G., Kassianos, A.P., Ellen, M., Affengruber, L., Frampton, G., Sfetcu, R., Marqués, M.E., Klerings, I., Spjker, R., Kontogiorgis, C., Nussbaumer-Streit, B., Mahmić-Kaknjo, M., Martinez, P., Ziganshina, L.E., Aguilar, L., Gartlehner, G.

2021

Overview

•Evidence on resource use is limited to studies reporting mostly on the resource “time” and not always under real life conditions.•Administration and project management, study selection, data extraction, and critical appraisal seem to be very resource intensive, varying with the number of included studies, while protocol development, literature search, and study retrieval take less time.•Lack of experience and domain knowledge, lack of collaborative and supportive software, as well as lack of good communication and management can increase resource use during the systematic review process. We aimed to map the resource use during systematic review (SR) production and reasons why steps of the SR production are resource intensive to discover where the largest gain in improving efficiency might be possible. We conducted a scoping review. An information specialist searched multiple databases (e.g., Ovid MEDLINE, Scopus) and implemented citation-based and grey literature searching. We employed dual and independent screenings of records at the title/abstract and full-text levels and data extraction. We included 34 studies. Thirty-two reported on the resource use—mostly time; four described reasons why steps of the review process are resource intensive. Study selection, data extraction, and critical appraisal seem to be very resource intensive, while protocol development, literature search, or study retrieval take less time. Project management and administration required a large proportion of SR production time. Lack of experience, domain knowledge, use of collaborative and SR-tailored software, and good communication and management can be reasons why SR steps are resource intensive. Resource use during SR production varies widely. Areas with the largest resource use are administration and project management, study selection, data extraction, and critical appraisal of studies.

• Publisher: Elsevier Inc,Elsevier Limited
• Subject: Biomedical Research - standards / Biomedical Research - statistics & numerical data / Citation indexes / Citation management software / Costs / Data Collection - methods / Data Collection - standards / Data Collection - statistics & numerical data / Decision making / Efficient / Epidemiology / Evidence synthesis / Humans / Internal Medicine / Personnel / Project management / Research Design / Research Report - standards / Resources / Systematic review / Systematic Reviews as Topic - methods / Systematic Reviews as Topic - standards / Time