Various international organizations such as the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) regularly require and publish protocols.

The rigour and trustworthiness of systematic reviews is, in large part, based on the a priori planning and documentation of a methodical approach to conduct (that is, a protocol).Ī systematic review protocol is important for several reasons: (1) it allows systematic reviewers to plan carefully and thereby anticipate potential problems (2) it allows reviewers to explicitly document what is planned before they start their review, enabling others to compare the protocol and the completed review (that is, to identify selective reporting), to replicate review methods if desired, and to judge the validity of planned methods (3) it prevents arbitrary decision making with respect to inclusion criteria and extraction of data and (4) it may reduce duplication of efforts and enhance collaboration, when available. This information is relevant to stakeholders across the health system. They help form the basis for developing practice guidelines and they provide information on gaps in knowledge, thus informing future research efforts. Systematic reviews hold a unique place in healthcare.

Systematic review authors and assessors are strongly encouraged to make use of PRISMA-P when drafting and appraising review protocols. This paper should be read together with the PRISMA-P 2015 statement. This PRISMA-P 2015 Explanation and Elaboration paper provides readers with a full understanding of and evidence about the necessity of each item as well as a model example from an existing published protocol. The PRISMA-P checklist contains 17 items considered to be essential and minimum components of a systematic review or meta-analysis protocol. Furthering these efforts and building on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines, an international group of experts has created a guideline to improve the transparency, accuracy, completeness, and frequency of documented systematic review and meta-analysis protocols-PRISMA-P (for protocols) 2015. Several efforts have emerged in recent years to rectify these problems, including development of an international register for prospective reviews (PROSPERO) and launch of the first open access journal dedicated to the exclusive publication of systematic review products, including protocols (BioMed Central’s Systematic Reviews). Evidence documenting the existence of selective reporting and excessive duplication of reviews on the same or similar topics is accumulating and many calls have been made in support of the documentation and public availability of review protocols. Protocols of systematic reviews and meta-analyses allow for planning and documentation of review methods, act as a guard against arbitrary decision making during review conduct, enable readers to assess for the presence of selective reporting against completed reviews, and, when made publicly available, reduce duplication of efforts and potentially prompt collaboration.

Notability review 2016