Rapid review methods more challenging during COVID-19: commentary with a focus on 8 knowledge synthesis steps

In a rapid review, several mechanisms are used to streamline the methods, such as narrowing the scope of the topic, parallelization of tasks (e.g., conducting screening and data abstraction simultaneously), using review short cuts (e.g., one team member screens citations from the literature search v...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of clinical epidemiology 2020-10, Vol.126, p.177-183
Main Authors: Tricco, Andrea C., Garritty, Chantelle M., Boulos, Leah, Lockwood, Craig, Wilson, Michael, McGowan, Jessie, McCaul, Michael, Hutton, Brian, Clement, Fiona, Mittmann, Nicole, Devane, Declan, Langlois, Etienne V., Abou-Setta, Ahmed M., Houghton, Catherine, Glenton, Claire, Kelly, Shannon E., Welch, Vivian A., LeBlanc, Annie, Wells, George A., Pham, Ba’, Lewin, Simon, Straus, Sharon E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automation
Betacoronavirus
Bibliographic data bases
Clinical decision making
Clinical trials
Collaboration
Consumers
Coronavirus Infections - diagnosis
Coronavirus Infections - pathology
Coronavirus Infections - therapy
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Decision making
Digital media
Epidemiology
Guidelines
Humans
Librarians
Literature reviews
Medical research
News
Organizational policy
Pandemics
Parallel processing
Pneumonia, Viral - diagnosis
Pneumonia, Viral - pathology
Pneumonia, Viral - therapy
Public health
Research Design
Review Literature as Topic
Reviews
SARS-CoV-2
Social networks
Teams
Time
Websites
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Summary:In a rapid review, several mechanisms are used to streamline the methods, such as narrowing the scope of the topic, parallelization of tasks (e.g., conducting screening and data abstraction simultaneously), using review short cuts (e.g., one team member screens citations from the literature search versus two), and using automation (e.g., using computer software to rank the literature search results in terms of relevance) [3]. The types of rapid reviews that the authors have conducted vary in scope including public health measures, clinical management, health-systems arrangements, and economic and social responses [5], providing a wide range of experiences to draw on. Furthermore, experienced teams can make thoughtful decisions about the scope of the project and whether it is important to include types of studies (e.g., randomized trials, systematic reviews, guidelines) or sources of evidence (e.g., websites, organizational policies and procedures, news sources, social media) to ensure the review is feasible and relevant. [...]searching the gray literature (i.e., unpublished and difficult to locate material) has become increasingly important because emergent literature on COVID-19 is scattered across numerous sources, such as websites, public health guidelines, organizational policies and procedures, news sources, social media, clinical trials, COVID-19 repositories, and preprint servers (e.g., medRxiv).
ISSN:0895-4356
1878-5921
DOI:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.06.029