Systematic Review Toolkit

Last updated: February 2026

What is a systematic review?

• Cochrane Library: About Cochrane reviews
• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reivews of Interventions
• University College London: Stages in a systematic review
• East Cheshire NHS Trust: Introduction to systematic reviews presentation [PDF version]

Systematic review tools

Systematic review FAQs

How to find unpublished data

Trial registries

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US) and EU Clinical Trials Register list ongoing and completed trials, including those without publications.
• WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) aggregates global registries.

Regulatory agencies

The below often include unpublished trial data submitted for drug approval.

• European Medicines Agency (EMA): European Public Assessment Reports, Clinical Data Publication initiative.
• US Food & Drug Administration (FDA): Drugs@FDA, Advisory Committee documents.

Cochrane CENTRAL

A curated database of controlled trials, including unpublished or grey literature.

Grey literature sources

‘Grey literature’ covers a wide variety of publications that aren’t controlled by commercial publishers. Find out more about understanding and using grey literature.

Government and public bodies

Outputs include policy documents, guidelines, statistical reports and consultation papers.

• Department of Health and Social Care
• NHS England
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

Charities and NGOs

Outputs include research reports, policy briefings, evaluations, and health and social care analyses.

• The King’s Fund
• Nuffield Trust
• The Health Foundation

International organisations

Outputs include global health reports, statistical publications, and policy briefings.

• World Health Organization (WHO)
• The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)
• European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies

Books

The books below are available to borrow from the library. Click on a book to place a reservation, or search the library catalogue at the link below.

Tools for Meta-Analysis

Some of the software listed below come at a cost.

• List of free meta-analysis tools
• Cochrane Review Manager: RevMan £
• Meta-Analysis Online £

Publication

• NIHR Open Research: Preparing a Systematic Review article
• Journal/Author Name Estimator (Jane): Have you recently written a paper, but you’re not sure to which journal you should submit it? Or maybe you want to find relevant articles to cite in your paper? Jane generates journals, articles, or authors, based on the inputted title/abstract, using data from PubMed.

For more support with writing for publication, visit our Research Toolkit.