How a Review Works
A typical EvidenceLab systematic review follows four stages. You are in control at every decision point — nothing proceeds without your approval.
Stage 1 — You Define the Question
Send us your study goal and PICO framework:
- Population: Who are the subjects? (e.g., adults with a specific condition)
- Intervention/Exposure: What is being studied? (e.g., a treatment or intervention)
- Comparator: What is it compared against? (e.g., standard of care or placebo)
- Outcome: What are you measuring? (e.g., symptom scores, clinical outcomes)
A rough description is fine — we will formalize it and return it to you for confirmation before running any searches.
Stage 2 — We Build and Deliver the Search Package
We generate structured search queries for three complementary databases:
- MEDLINE/PubMed — The global standard for biomedical literature (35M+ records)
- OpenAlex — An open academic graph covering 260M+ works, including journals not indexed by PubMed
- ClinicalTrials.gov — The US registry of clinical trials, capturing ongoing and unpublished trial results
Together these cover approximately 97% of published biomedical literature.
We return to you:
- The exact query strings used (fully reproducible, suitable for your Methods section)
- The complete list of retrieved articles, ranked in descending order of relevance score
- For each article: title, authors, journal, year, abstract, and relevance score
- Estimated cost for the full review based on your chosen inclusion cutoff
You see every article before you commit to anything.
Stage 3 — You Confirm the Scope
Review the ranked article list and choose your relevance cutoff.
- Higher cutoff → fewer articles → faster turnaround, lower cost
- Lower cutoff → more articles → more comprehensive review, higher cost
You can also:
- Manually include or exclude specific articles
- Upload additional articles you already have access to
- Request a revised search with adjusted parameters
Once you confirm the final article list and approve the cost estimate, we proceed.
Stage 4 — We Deliver the Systematic Review
You receive a complete, manuscript-ready systematic review document (.docx) structured per PRISMA 2020 guidelines, including:
Methods Section
- Formal study goal and PICO
- Database search strategy with query strings and dates
- Inclusion/exclusion criteria
- PRISMA flow diagram
Results Section
- Study characteristics table
- Direction-of-effect summary
- Consistency vs. contradiction analysis
- Population heterogeneity
- Effect magnitude language
Discussion Section
- Evidence gaps
- Clinical implications
Risk of Bias Signals
- Per-article paragraph on randomization, blinding, and missing data
- Structured for RoB 2.0 or Newcastle-Ottawa completion
The document is approximately 90% submission-ready. You will need to add your own clinical judgment, complete the structured risk of bias table, and perform any statistical meta-analysis required by your target journal.
Timeline
| Stage | Typical Duration |
|---|---|
| Stage 1 — PICO confirmation | 1–2 business days |
| Stage 2 — Search package delivery | 2–3 business days |
| Stage 3 — Scope confirmation | Your timeline |
| Stage 4 — Full review delivery | 5–10 business days after confirmation |
Rush delivery (2–3 business days) available for straightforward topics upon request. Complex topics or large article sets may require additional time — we will communicate any delays before they affect your deadline.
What You Do After Delivery
- Review the document and request any revisions within 14 days
- Complete the structured risk of bias table using the signals we extracted as your starting point
- Add your own clinical interpretation where journals expect author judgment
- Submit to your target journal