Grant: Planning Grants

Systematic review (SR) protocols are seldom published with rare exceptions, such as Cochrane protocols. Furthermore, little guidance is currently available on how to prepare them. Where protocols are accessible, they help determine whether unplanned decisions, not otherwise documented in published reports, were introduced in the SR process, including changing the primary or other outcomes of the SR or reporting only statistically significant results. Limiting the reporting of results or highlighting only those which are interesting or significant can lead users of SRs, such as policy makers and health care providers, to make suboptimal or incorrect decisions that may impact patient care and policy. To address these problems, an international registry for SR protocols has been developed and is being launched in February 2011 - PROSPERO (Prospective Register of Ongoing Systematic Reviews). Along with this important initiative, comes the need for a minimum set of items to report in an SR protocol. A priori determination of SR methods, via protocols, will aid authors in planning SRs and may act, not only to promote standardized reporting of SR protocols, but to improve the conduct of SRs overall. In this application, we are proposing to hold a 1½ day meeting of 34 key experts and stakeholders, including 9 Canadian researchers (i.e. SR methodologists, reporting guideline developers, journal editors). The objective of the meeting is to develop a checklist to aid authors when reporting SR protocols. Checklist items have already undergone extensive Delphi iterations during PROSPERO development. These items will be presented, discussed, debated and refined into a checklist for SR protocol reporting - the PRISMAP (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis Protocols) guidelines. Development of PRISMAP will follow the process for reporting guideline development designed by the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) group.