A Comprehensive Framework to Reinforce Evidence Synthesis Features in Cloud-Based Systematic Review Tools

Systematic reviews are powerful methods used to determine the state-of-the-art in a given field from existing studies and literature. They are critical but time-consuming in research and decision making for various disciplines. When conducting a review, a large volume of data is usually generated from relevant studies. Computer-based tools are often used to manage such data and to support the systematic review process. This paper describes a comprehensive analysis to gather the required features of a systematic review tool, in order to support the complete evidence synthesis process. We propose a framework, elaborated by consulting experts in different knowledge areas, to evaluate significant features and thus reinforce existing tool capabilities. The framework will be used to enhance the currently available functionality of CloudSERA, a cloud-based systematic review tool focused on Computer Science, to implement evidence-based systematic review processes in other disciplines.
This research was funded by the Spanish Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigacion) with ERDF funds grant number TIN2017-85797-R (VISAIGLE project). The research stay of T. Person in the SFU was funded by Erasmus+ KA107 grant number 2017-1-ES01-KA107-037422. The APC was funded by the VISAIGLE project.