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Systematic Reviews and Related Evidence Syntheses

8 phases of a review project

The PIECCESS framework provides a series of 8 phases and processes, each with potential scholarly outputs, to follow for the life of a review project:

  1. Proposal- Determine the feasibility of the review
  2. Protocol- Develop the methods of the review; consider registering protocol
  3. Preliminary findings- Prepare report for a conference presentation, a poster, or other venue to share
  4. Publish paper- Select best journal and submit paper
  5. Preserve project- Share and preserve the project 
  6. Promote the project- Select stakeholders and promote
  7. Impact tracking- Collect the impact of the project- such as citations and altmetrics
  8. Update algorithm- Set the triggering criteria for an update

Each phase requires 8 processes:

  • Plan: each phase requires some planning and project management
  • Identify- searching and sorting the results
  • Evaluate- appraising the studies identified
  • Extract- gathering data from selected results
  • Combine- combining and visualizing results as appropriate
  • Explain- providing the context of the results
  • Summarize- pulling everything together from the phase, following standards when available
  • Share- publishing or otherwise sharing as appropriate

PIECCESS Framework was summarized from: Foster MJ and Jewell ST (Eds.) (2022) Piecing Together Systematic Reviews and Other Evidence Syntheses. (Medical Library Association Books Series) Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Dec 2022.