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| 1. Protocol | Outline your planned framework for your evidence synthesis |
| 2. Develop a research question | Identify a knowledge gap in your discipline |
| 3. Select databases | Databases you choose will depend on your discipline |
| 4. Create search strategy | Design comprehensive search strategies across databases |
| 5. Register protocol | Make publicly-available your planned framework |
| 6. Translate search strategy | Each database uses different syntax for searching |
| 7. Export search results | Export search results to find included articles |
| 8. Article screening | Remove studies not related to your topic |
| 9. Data extraction | Extract data to analyze |
| 10. Assess results | Measure risk of bias and ensure articles fall within inclusion criteria |
| 11. Synthesize, map, or describe results | Synthesize your data and describe results |
Please note, librarians can be heavily involved in the knowledge synthesis and systematic review process. However, content experts should manage specific steps in the process. Librarians who create and write the search methodology should be included as a co-author on publications. Librarians who collaborate with the team on search strategy and/or citation management should be acknowledged in publications.
Once you're ready to take on your knowledge synthesis, you can consult Unity Health Toronto's Knowledge Synthesis Readiness Checklist to ensure you've prepared yourself and your team to take on a knowledge synthesis.
Knowledge synthesis reviews take considerable more time than a literature review, and require a multi-person team of collaborators. A systematic review, for example, often takes up to 18 months to complete.
You can visit the PredicTER tool to get a sense of how long it takes to complete a systematic review or a systematic map, and how long each stage of the review will take on average. The underlying data is based on almost five years of CEE (Collaboration for Environmental Evidence) reviews.
Average FTE time for a CEE systematic review (164 FTE days total), from Haddaway & Westgate, PredicTER.