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Reviews and Evidence Syntheses: Rapid Review

Definition

‘A rapid review is a form of knowledge synthesis that accelerates the process of conducting a traditional systematic review through streamlining or omitting a variety of methods to produce evidence in a resource-efficient manner.’

Goal or Purpose Or Key Features

Rapid Reviews are evidence syntheses that prioritize a shortened timeline of the study over rigorous and exhaustive searching of the available evidence.  While some definitions suggest a timeline of approximately 12 weeks, most definitions range between 6 weeks and 6 months to complete a rapid review.

While often described as what they are NOT (systematic reviews), the specific parts of a systematic review process that are eliminated or shortened are not uniform in all rapid reviews.  These may include:

  • Defining inclusion or exclusion criteria that eliminate certain forms of evidence from consideration, for example, only using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or not including conference abstracts, unpublished clinical trial data, or other grey literature.
  • Restricting by language or publication date
  • Searching only two or three literature databases
  • Using onlly one reviewer to screen titles/abstracts or extract outcomes from the full text

Rapid Reviews may be an appropriate type of evidence synthesis given your research question, however the need for a rapid review is determined by the research, and not your own individual time constraints.

Rapid reviews may be appropriate when:

  • Urgent decision-making is needed in the the face of disease outbreaks, emerging threats, or natural disasters
  • Informing Guidelines with the latest evidence
  • New and emerging technologies or interventions
  • Rapidly evolving research areas
  • As a precursor to a full systematic review

However, Rapid Reviews are an inappropriate methodology when use for the following reasons:

  • It is perceived as 'easier' for researchers new to evidence synthesis.
  • To achieve quick publication

These inappropriate reasons risk duplicating a more comprehensive systematic review, and are more prone to bias or reaching conclusions based on incomplete evidence.

Guidance

Exemplar Articles

Librarian Support

How can University of Toledo librarians help with your rapid review?

  • Meet with you and/or members of your research team to talk about your topic and your search strategies, as well as databases and search terms that would be appropriate for your topic. [Schedule a Consult]
  • For faculty, resident physicians, fellows, and staff members: a librarian can do one search in a single database and email you the results. [Request a Search]

Note: Our services are only available to current UToledo faculty, resident physicians, fellows, students, and staff members. If you are affiliated with another institution, please contact your library to see what services are available for your review.