 Hi, my name is Alex, I'm a librarian at the University of Alabama, and today I'm going to talk about how to create a systematic review protocol and why you should create one. If you're watching this video, you probably have some idea of what a systematic review is. But what is a systematic review protocol? According to Prisma, a systematic review protocol describes the rationale, hypothesis, and planned methods of the review. It should be prepared before a review is started and used as a guide to carry out the review. As the National Institutes of Health note, a systematic review can act as a roadmap for your review and your review team. It's especially helpful with keeping the entire review team on track, especially when working remotely. It also promotes transparency of methods, which is crucial to a systematic review. This is especially the case when you register your protocol with a systematic review protocol registry. More on that later. There are plenty of freely available systematic review templates available on the web, but this is one that I use. We'll provide a link to it below. Here you'll explicitly document all major aspects of your upcoming review. Your background, objective, and review question should be all clearly stated so that your review team stays focused on the original research question. You'll also need to spell out your search strategy. We recommend either consulting with a research librarian or bringing one on to the review team. You may want to also document your search terms and subject headings here. You'll also provide inclusion and exclusion criteria. That your inclusion and exclusion criteria stays consistent throughout the whole process is especially important in terms of transparency and reproducibility. You'll document data extraction strategies, timetables, and research roles in the rest of the protocol. In order to ensure transparency and let other researchers know what you're working on, you'll probably want to register your protocol in a systematic review protocol registry. You may want to contact a librarian to determine which registry is best for you. They largely differ in terms of discipline slash content. Prospero is primarily for public health, health education, and biomedical reviews, while the open science framework is multidisciplinary in nature. We'll take a quick look at Prospero. Here you can find instructions on registering your review, and you can also search their collection of registered protocols. This will allow you to see what other researchers are working on, which could reduce duplication of efforts. And that's all for this video, hopefully you now have a better idea of what a systematic review protocol is, why you should create one, and how you can register your protocol. And remember, if you have a question, just ask a librarian.