Skip to Main Content
University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

Systematic Reviews & Evidence Synthesis Methods

Report

Writing the report

Transparency and reproducibility is key! Your paper should include a detailed explanation of your search and screening methods and a summary and analysis of your findings. Ideally, readers should be able to follow and potentially replicate every step. Keep in mind the conventions of any commissioning body or target journal, as they may have specific requirements for reviews.

The Cochrane Handbook has some useful guidance around interpreting and reporting your findings: 

Choosing a publication

Do your research on the journal(s) you intend to submit to. Make sure you understand their audience, their scope, and any standards or expectations they may have around systematic reviews. You may also want to consider a journal's impact and your options for making your work open.

Useful resources and tools:

  •  Google Scholar Metrics: Review the citation impact metrics for journals you are considering as a publication outlet.
  • JANE (Journal/Author Name Estimator): Enter the title and/or abstract of your paper and Jane will then compare your document to millions of documents in PubMed to find the best matching journals, authors or articles.
  • thinkchecksubmit.org: A tool that will help you discover what you need to know when assessing whether or not a publisher is suitable for your research.
  • Sherpa Romeo: An online resource that aggregates and presents publisher and journal open access policies. This can help you understand your  open access options for each journal.

Maximizing impact

Share your work and the supplementary materials widely! 

If your journal isn't open access, investigate their policies for sharing post-prints, and deposit a copy in Texas ScholarWorks or another repository. People will then find an open copy in Google Scholar under the "All versions" link.

Consider sharing your study's data and supplementary materials too! This can be done locally, using Texas Data Repository or in another data or open science repository like the Center for Open Sciences OSF Platform. Here are some examples of how people have shared protocols and supplementary materials in support of transparence and reproducibility:

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.