Systematic Reviews

Featured article:Reflections and aspirations: the journal after 5 years

Co-Editors-in-Chief of Systematic Reviews, David Moher, Lesley A. Stewart and Paul Shekelle, reflect on the last five years and look forward at what the future years might hold for the journal and field. This Editorial discusses many of the exciting developments that are afoot, including harnessing technology to automate parts of the systematic review process, network meta-analyses and more, and their vision for how the journal will continue to enrich its readership in the years to come. From a relative simple world of Systematic Reviews five years ago to the burgeoning array of review types some of which the journal publishes: rapid reviews, realist reviews, network meta-analysis, scoping reviews, and overviews.

'Exciting developments are afoot, the systematic review community is likely on the cusp of harnessing technology to automate parts of the systematic review process.'

'Over the past few years, network meta-analyses have brought real innovation and helped to address real-world health care questions of “what works best” that pairwise reviews could not easily address.'

Systematic Reviews has played a role in supporting evidence synthesis and the evidence synthesis community and that the journal will continue to enrich its readership in the coming years.

Call for papers: Automation in systematic reviews

We are pleased to announce that Systematic Reviews is accepting submissions for a new thematic series on automation in the systematic review process.

Guest Edited by Professor Joseph Lau (Brown University, USA), this series will include articles about innovative uses of computer technologies in producing systematic reviews.

About the Editors

Dr David Moher, Editor-in-Chief

Dr Moher is a senior scientist at the Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Ottawa. Dr Moher has been involved in systematic reviews for more than 20 years and has made contributions to the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews. Dr Moher is associated with many journals, is a member of the advisory board for the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, and a member of the EQUATOR Network's steering group.

Dr Paul Shekelle, Editor-in-Chief

Dr Shekelle is a Staff Physician at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center and has served as the Director of the Southern California Evidence-based Practice Center for the RAND Corporation since 1997. He is also a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine. He is widely recognized in the field of guidelines, quality measurement, and evidence-based medicine. Dr Shekelle has extensive experience in the health care arena and was previously the methodologist for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ]) Low-Back Guidelines Panel, and he has participated in a number of other guideline development activities. He is currently the chair of the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians.

Prof Lesley Stewart, Editor-in-Chief

Prof Stewart is Director of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York and is a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator. Prof Stewart has been involved in evidence synthesis in healthcare since the late 1980's, previously running the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit meta-analysis research program. Together with colleagues in Cambridge and Oxford, she helped establish the methodology and framework for individual patient data (IPD) reviews and was a founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration. Her research interests include the avoidance of bias and development of IPD methods and approaches to systematic review. Recently, she has instigated the development of PROSPERO an international register for the prospective registration of systematic reviews.