The nuts and bolts of PROSPERO: an international prospective register of systematic reviews

By A. Booth, Mike Clarke, G. Dooley, D. Ghersi, David Moher, M. Petticrew, L. Stewart. Systematic Reviews, 2012

1,395 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundFollowing publication of the PRISMA statement, the UK Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York in England began to develop an international prospective register of systematic reviews with health-related outcomes. The objectives were to reduce unplanned duplication of reviews and provide transparency in the review process, with the aim of minimizing reporting bias.MethodsAn international advisory group was formed and a consultation undertaken to establish the key items necessary for inclusion in the register and to gather views on various aspects of functionality. This article describes the development of the register, now called PROSPERO, and the process of registration.ResultsPROSPERO offers free registration and free public access to a unique prospective register of systematic reviews across all areas of health from all around the world. The dedicated web-based interface is electronically searchable and available to all prospective registrants. At the moment, inclusion in PROSPERO is restricted to systematic reviews of the effects of interventions and strategies to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor health conditions, for which there is a health-related outcome.Ideally, registration should take place before the researchers have started formal screening against inclusion criteria but reviews are eligible as long as they have not progressed beyond the point of completing data extraction.The required dataset captures the key attributes of review design as well as the administrative details necessary for registration.Submitted registration forms are checked against the scope for inclusion in PROSPERO and for clarity of content before being made publicly available on the register, rejected, or returned to the applicant for clarification.The public records include an audit trail of major changes to planned methods, details of when the review has been completed, and links to resulting publications when provided by the authors.ConclusionsThere has been international support and an enthusiastic response to the principle of prospective registration of protocols for systematic reviews and to the development of PROSPERO.In October 2011, PROSPERO contained 200 records of systematic reviews being undertaken in 26 countries around the world on a diverse range of interventions.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/17adb475580bf0581c7fe8edf9aa95bcdf2c0d48

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Sociology and Political Science

In Statistics and Probability

Citations in the corpus

A practical guide to question formation, systematic searching and study screening for literature reviews in ecology and evolution (2021, neutral): “Second, systematic review methods are iterative (Booth et al., 2012).”
Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 statement (2015, background): “This challenge has been taken up by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, which has spearheaded the establishment of an international register — PROS-PERO (International Prospective Register of Ongoing Systematic Reviews, http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero) [16,17].”
Accelerometer Data Collection and Processing Criteria to Assess Physical Activity and Other Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Practical Considerations (2017, positive): “Inclusion/exclusion criteria and analytical methods were specified in advance and registered in the PROSPERO (http://www.crd.york.ac. uk/PROSPERO/) international database of systematic reviews (CRD42016039991) [32].”
Indirect and mixed‐treatment comparison, network, or multiple‐treatments meta‐analysis: many names, many benefits, many concerns for the next generation evidence synthesis tool (2012, methodology): “If the review is carried out as a Cochrane review, the registration of the protocol is compulsory; otherwise, reviewers can use an online database (such as PROSPERO (Booth et al., 2012; Palepu et al., 2011) www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/).”
The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews (2021, background): “[32] In addition, the publishing landscape has transformed, with multiple avenues now available for registering and disseminating systematic review protocols,[33, 34] disseminating reports of systematic reviews, and sharing data and materials, such as preprint servers and publicly accessible reposit”
Conceptual and Technical Challenges in Network Meta-analysis (2013, background): “As for all systematic reviews, network meta-analysis should be based on detailed protocols, ideally registered prospectively (46, 47).”
MSˆ2: Multi-Document Summarization of Medical Studies (2021, background): “They are a ﬁxture in the biomedical literature, with many established protocol around their registration, production, and publication (Chalmers et al., 2002; Starr et al., 2009; Booth et al., 2012).”
The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. (2021, neutral): “In addition, the publishing landscape has transformed, with multiple avenues now available for registering and disseminating systematic review protocols [33 , 34] , disseminating reports of systematic reviews, and sharing data and materials, such as preprint servers and publicly accessible repositor”