Online tools supporting the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews and systematic maps: a case study on CADIMA and review of existing tools

Christian Kohl,Ralf Wilhelm,Emma J Mcintosh,Stefan Unger,Steffen Kecke,Neal R Haddaway,Joachim Schiemann

doi:10.1186/s13750-018-0115-5

Abstract

Systematic reviews and systematic maps represent powerful tools to identify, collect, evaluate and summarise primary research pertinent to a specific research question or topic in a highly standardised and reproducible manner. Even though they are seen as the “gold standard” when synthesising primary research, systematic reviews and maps are typically resource-intensive and complex activities. Thus, managing the conduct and reporting of such reviews can become a time consuming and challenging task. This paper introduces the open access online tool CADIMA, which was developed through a collaboration between the Julius Kühn-Institut and the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, in order to increase the efficiency of the evidence synthesis process and facilitate reporting of all activities to maximise methodological rigour. Furthermore, we analyse how CADIMA compares with other available tools by providing a comprehensive summary of existing software designed for the purposes of systematic review management. We show that CADIMA is the only available open access tool that is designed to: (1) assist throughout the systematic review/map process; (2) be suited to reviews broader than medical sciences; (3) allow for offline data extraction; and, (4) support working as a review team.

Highlights

Introduction to CADIMACADIMA is a client–server software application and was developed by using the interactive management framework Scrum and the project management tool Redmine
Seen as a “gold standard” when synthesising primary research, the central tenets of systematic review and map methodologies necessarily increase the complexity of the review processes and their resource requirements
Review of existing online tools A series of searches was conducted for the purposes of comparing CADIMA with other available online tools to identify software packages designed to facilitate evidence synthesis

Summary

Introduction

Introduction to CADIMACADIMA is a client–server software application and was developed by using the interactive management framework Scrum (http://www.scrumguides.org/) and the project management tool Redmine (http://www.redmine. org/). CADIMA is a client–server software application and was developed by using the interactive management framework Scrum (http://www.scrumguides.org/) and the project management tool Redmine The support provided by CADIMA mirrors the key steps of systematic reviews or systematic maps. Systematic reviews were first established in the field of healthcare to support evidence-based decision making [1]. Their use is continuously expanding into other disciplines, including social welfare, international development, education, crime and justice, environmental management (including the impact assessment of crop genetic improvement technologies [2,3,4]), software engineering [5] and food/feed safety assessment [6]. Kohl et al Environ Evid (2018) 7:8 teams during the evidence synthesis process (the term evidence synthesis is used to cover both systematic reviews and systematic maps, which aim to characterise the available evidence-base rather than providing quantitative or qualitative answers to an impact or effectiveness question [8, 9])

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion