Systematic reviews: UKHSA Knowledge and Library Services
Source: gov.uk (2025-09-17)

Knowledge and Library Services (KLS) can provide support to conduct systematic reviews.

Contact our team to get expert assistance.

Request support with a systematic review (https://forms.ukhsa.gov.uk/kls-enquiries)

Assistance KLS provide for systematic and rapid reviews

It is essential that a member of KLS is involved in your review team as early as possible in order to discuss the methodology and process of conducting a review. Any type of systematic review needs to have a well-designed and comprehensive search strategy behind it. If you do not retrieve some of the relevant studies available, the review results will be limited and potentially biased.

This section contains information about how we can support your evidence review.

Protocol

We can provide assistance preparing your protocol. This describes the rationale and planned methods for your review. It should be written before your review begins and followed when you conduct the review. Guidance on writing a protocol is available in PRISMA for systematic review protocols (PRISMA-P) (https://www.prisma-statement.org/protocols).

You should register your systematic review in the PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/) registry. This should be done before data extraction begins. For further guidance, check the following guide from BioMed Central (BMC): Planning a systematic review? Think protocols (http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2015/01/05/planning-a-systematic-review-think-protocols/).

Literature searching

KLS can provide complex literature searches (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/literature-search-service-ukhsa-knowledge-and-library-services) to help in the production of a systematic review. This involves:
- conducting preliminary scoping searches to find similar reviews (to reduce duplication of effort)
- developing the search strategy
- translating the strategy for other databases
- running the searches on a variety of sources de-duplicating citations
- providing the results in Endnote or another suitable format
- citation or similar article searching can also be provided, using sources such as Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Google Scholar
Screening

We can advise you on the best way to screen your results and show you tools that can help this process.

Software tools

We offer training and guidance (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/training-and-events-ukhsa-knowledge-and-library-services) on using tools such as EndNote and EPPI-Reviewer.

Write-up

KLS can write up the methods for your review and help with production of the PRISMA flow diagram (https://www.prisma-statement.org/prisma-2020-flow-diagram).

Types of review

KLS can assist with a variety of evidence review types including systematic and rapid reviews.

You can contact us using our enquiry form (https://forms.ukhsa.gov.uk/kls-enquiries) for more information and we can help you to choose the right type of review for your needs.

UKHSA staff are also able to commission a complete rapid review through one of our UKHSA evidence teams. Visit our page on rapid reviews (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rapid-reviews-ukhsa-knowledge-and-library-services) for details.

Feedback

This is a new service. Help us improve it by providing feedback. (https://submit.forms.service.gov.uk/form/7932/give-feedback-on-knowledge-and-library-services)