Backgrounds: Since the COVID-19 outbreak, health decision-makers have elevated the need for timeliness of evidence, and there is an urgent need for a rapid literature synthesis method to provide highly time-sensitive evidence to aid decision making in urgent emergencies. Although systematic reviews (SR) have a definite advantage in synthesizing high-quality evidence, their rigorous methodological processes often take 1 year or more to complete, limiting the timeliness of evidence. Rapid systematic reviews (RR) have gained international attention because of their ability to provide more timely evidence. It is considered a comprehensive approach to the literature similar to SR and scoping reviews, and its development methods and processes are critical to the reliability of conclusions.
Objectives: To analyze the development methods and processes of rapid systematic reviews published in Cochrane Library.
Methods: A search was conducted on the Cochrane Library (https://www.cochranelibrary.com/) website using the terms “Rapid review” to obtain published rapid systematic reviews, and details of the formulation methods and processes were extracted according to a predesigned information extraction table.
Results: After preliminary results and screening, we found 12 eligible rapid systematic reviews, and their production dates were concentrated in 2018 (2), 2020 (8), and 2021 (2), of which 5 focused on COVID-19, and we are working on the details about the main results and look forward to presenting them in Cochrane London 2023.