12. The final report


This session will detail how the final systematic review or map reports should be produced. Requirements of CEE and other major organisations and publishers will be outlined, along with the sections and level of detail necessary for any report. Practical advice for ensuring efficient completion of a review report will be discussed, along with advice for ensuring acceptance of the review by stakeholders. The process by which systematic reviews and maps are typically peer-reviewed and published will be discussed. This session includes a practical exercise gaining experience of using the systematic review reporting standards, ROSES.


Learning objectives:

  • To be aware of the main sections necessary in a systematic review and a systematic map report
  • To appreciate the type of information that should be included in a report and level of detail necessary
  • To understand what information can be placed in supplementary information and what should be in the main text of the report
  • To be aware of ways in which stakeholder engagement at the draft report stage can help to assure endorsement and acceptance by stakeholders
  • To understand the importance of expert methodological peer-review of systematic review and map reports
  • To be aware of how review reports can be peer-reviewed and published

To begin, watch the following presentation:


You can find the lecture handouts here.


Next, read the tenth chapter of the guidance from the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence here. We'll revisit sections of the CEE Guidance throughout the course. It focuses on environmental and conservation topics, but is subject agnostic, meaning that it's useful for other disciplines, too. Feel free to focus instead on the Cochrane Guidance if you work with healthcare topics.

Please also read this article introducing the ROSES reporting standards:

Haddaway, N.R., Macura, B., Whaley, P. and Pullin, A.S., 2018. ROSES RepOrting standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses: pro forma, flow-diagram and descriptive summary of the plan and conduct of environmental systematic reviews and systematic maps. Environmental Evidence, 7(1):7



Practical exercise


In this practical exercise, you'll spend some time filling in a ROSES reporting form for an example systematic review.


  1. Check out this systematic review here - Download the review report

  2. Download a ROSES form for systematic review reports - Visit the ROSES reporting standards website and download the form designed for systematic review reports here

  3. Fill in the ROSES form - Try to complete as much of the ROSES form as you can. Don't worry if you find this hard - it would be much easier for your own review! If you're struggling, read the ROSES website and the article above to help you fill in the form.

Once you're done, check out the ROSES form that the authors filled in here. How did their responses compare to yours?


In the final module, you'll spend some time thinking about how to communicate your review findings to its end users.


Move to the next module!