Most systematic reviews require at least three team members. 

Roles include:

• Project manager/team leader - Lead the project from beginning to end, including communicating with librarians and other experts, making sure team members stay on schedule, and submitting the manuscript.
• Screeners - There are typically two rounds of screening. Each article is screened by two people with enough subject matter expertise to determine if an article should be included or not. Conflicts in inclusion/exclusion can be resolved by a third team member.
• Librarian(s) - Working with a librarian is recommended by the systematic review handbooks because it results in better search quality, reproducibility, and reporting. Your librarian can advise you in developing a search strategy for both published and unpublished literature to retrieve the most well-rounded and least-biased group of relevant citations. Your librarian can also help to set up citation management software, such as Zotero or Mendeley.
• Statistician - Depending on the nature of your systematic review, and if you decide to do a meta analysis, you will require the statistical expertise of a statistician. A meta analysis is a qualitative statistical analysis of your studies that summarizes the results and tests the pooled data for statistical significance.

Team members may include staff, faculty, and students who can cycle through and leave the project. Be prepared to find replacements if necessary to continue.

Formulating a research question takes time and your team may go through different versions until settling on the right research question. Below are several examples of research question frameworks. Think of these frameworks as you would for a house or building. A framework is there to provide support and to be a scaffold for the rest of the structure. In the same way, a research question framework can also help structure your evidence synthesis question. 

PICO for Quantitative Studies

• P       Population/Problem
• I        Intervention/Exposure
• C       Comparison
• O      Outcome

Example: Is gabapentin (intervention), compared to placebo (comparison), effective in decreasing pain symptoms (outcome) in middle aged male amputees suffering phantom limb pain (population)?

PICo for Qualitative Studies

• P       Population/Problem
• I         Phenomenon of Interest 
• Co    Context

Example: What are the experiences (phenomenon of interest) of caregivers providing home based care to patients with Alzheimer's disease (population) in Australia (context)?

​​SPICE

• S    Setting
• P   Perspective (for whom)
• I    Intervention/Exposure
• C   Comparison
• E   Evaluation

Example: What are the benefits (evaluation) of a doula (intervention) for low income mothers (perspective) in the developed world (setting) compared to no support (comparison)?

SPIDER

• S     Sample
• PI   Phenomenon of Interest
• D    Design
• E     Evaluation
• R    Study Type

Example: What are the experiences (evaluation) of women (sample) undergoing IVF treatment (phenomenon of interest) as assessed?

Design:  questionnaire or survey or interview

Study Type: qualitative or mixed method

Inclusion and exclusion criteria are developed after a research question is finalized but before a search is carried out. They determine the limits for the evidence synthesis and are typically reported in the methods section of the publication. For unfamiliar or unclear concepts, a definition may be necessary to adequately describe the criterion for readers.