Step 10: Make your systematic review publicly available

It is critical to make your systematic review publicly available, independent from what the outcome was (and even if no clear conclusions could be made). The reason for this necessity is twofold: first, to mitigate publication bias and second, to inform colleagues about your study to avoid unnecessary duplication of work. Be aware that the status of your protocol should be updated upon publication of your manuscript.

Be cautious when interpreting your results and make sure to acknowledge sources of bias; consider heterogeneity, generalisability, and relevance.

There are formal guidelines on how to report systematic reviews, called PRISMA guidelines (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). The sections of a manuscript are similar to an original article comprising a brief introduction to the topic with a clear statement of the research question(s) to be answered, a method section with reporting of methodological details including unequivocal identification of the protocol, a results section describing attained results and risk of bias, as well as a discussion section gauging the results in the context of available evidence and also providing comparisons with other similar systematic reviews. Also make sure to include a PRISMA flow chart. Report all these details so that other researchers can fully and independently reproduce all steps of your systematic review; use supplementary methods if a journal imposes word limits on methodology.