Guidelines for Article Preparation for Submission
Preparing a Living Systematic Review article
Living Systematic Reviews (LSRs) are defined by Cochrane as “a systematic review that is continually updated, incorporating relevant new evidence as it becomes available”.
LSRs employ a methodology of constant surveillance of the literature to identify new evidence that becomes available following the publication of the baseline systematic review. LSRs are updated at regular intervals following recurring searches of the literature to incorporate the new evidence.
Recurring searches can result in one of three outcomes:
- Search returns no new studies;
- Search returns new studies, but the findings do not affect the previous conclusions;
- Search returns new studies that change the previous conclusions.
Depending on the outcome, an LSR may require no changes or may need to be updated. The outcome of the search will also dictate if a new round of peer review should be initiated (see Peer review section).
An LSR will primarily have the same content and formatting as a standard systematic review; however, some additions will be required to account for the ‘living’ methodology applied (see Main Body). These additions will mainly be related to:
- The frequency of searches and screening
- When and how the LSR will be updated
In addition to these, authors should justify their use of a ‘living’ method and reviewers will be asked if a ‘living’ method is appropriate for the LSR topic. Not all topics are appropriate for an LSR - we refer to Guidance for the production and publication of Cochrane living systematic reviews for scenarios where an LSR is appropriate. These include:
- The review is of priority to decision making
- There is an important level of uncertainty in the existing evidence
- There is likely to be emerging evidence that will impact on the conclusions
These scenarios provide the framework regarding when an LSR is appropriate; however, these are not exhaustive, and we are happy to accept LSRs that do not meet these criteria with justification from the author.
This page provides information about writing a Living Systematic Review for F1000Research, including the key sections that must be present in the article. Please also refer to F1000Research’s editorial policies.
A template for Living Systematic Reviews is available here.
Criteria
Systematic Reviews should usually be based on medical interventions or animal model studies. They should deal with a clearly formulated question and use systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically assess the relevant research. Additionally, the review/topic under review should meet one of the following three criteria:
- The review is of priority to decision making
- There is an important level of uncertainty in the existing evidence
- There is likely to be emerging evidence that will impact on the conclusions
These scenarios provide the framework regarding when an LSR is appropriate; however, these are not exhaustive, and we are happy to accept LSRs that do not meet these criteria with justification from the author. Where an LSR does not meet the above criteria, the decision to include an article as an LSR will be at the discretion of the editorial team.
F1000Research encourages authors to register the protocol for their Systematic Review prospectively in the PROSPERO database and endorses the PRISMA Statement; systematic reviews and meta-analyses must adhere to these guidelines.
Language
All articles must be written in good English. Both UK English and US English are accepted but this must be consistent throughout the manuscript. Please note that the article will not undergo editing by F1000Research before publication and a manuscript could be rejected during the initial checking process if it is deemed unintelligible and unsuitable for peer review.
For authors whose first language is not English, it may be beneficial to have the manuscript read by a native English speaker with scientific expertise. There are many commercial editing services that can provide this service at a cost to the authors.
Main Sections
- Authors
- Title
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Update Text
- Main Body
- Data and Software Availability
- Reporting Guidelines
- Author Contributions
- Competing Interests
- Grant Information
- Acknowledgments
- Supplementary Material
- References
- Figures and Tables
- Changes between versions
- Loss of ‘living’ status
- Peer review
Authors
All authors should have made a significant contribution to the work and agree to be accountable for the parts of the work they have done. All authors should approve the final version for publication (see the ICMJE’s Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals for more details). Being an author implies full responsibility for the article’s content and that the work conforms to our editorial policies. For large, multi-centre collaborations, the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript must be listed as authors.
Details of each author’s contribution must be listed in the Author contributions section.
Anyone who has contributed but does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. The involvement of any professional medical writer assistance must be declared.
Title
Please provide a concise and specific title that clearly reflects the content of the article.
‘Living Systematic Review’ or a variation of this term should be included in the title.
Abstract
Abstracts should be up to 300 words long and provide a succinct summary of the article. Although the abstract should explain why the article might be interesting, the importance of the work should not be over-emphasized. Citations should not be used in the abstract. Abbreviations, if needed, should be spelled out. Abstracts are structured into Background, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.
Keywords
Authors should supply up to eight relevant keywords that describe the subject of their article. These will improve the visibility of your article.
Update Text
As with all new versions published on F1000Research, during submission you will need to provide a brief description (maximum 300 words) of the main differences compared with the previous version – this will be published in an amendments box, alongside the new version.
In addition to the amendments box, an additional box will need to be included with LSRs summarising the outcome of the most recent search. This will include the date of the latest search, date of the next search and text describing the search outcome. An example is provided below:
Last search: 1 March 2019
Next search: 1 June 2019
Searches for this living systematic review are run and screened every 3 months. The current search (01/03/19) identified 1 new study. This study made no significant change to the results and conclusions. A new version of this article will be posted incorporating the new article and any relevant articles published by then following the next search.
Next search: 1 June 2019
Searches for this living systematic review are run and screened every 3 months. The current search (01/03/19) identified 1 new study. This study made no significant change to the results and conclusions. A new version of this article will be posted incorporating the new article and any relevant articles published by then following the next search.
Main Body
The format of the main body of the article is flexible: it should be concise, making it easy to read and review, and presented in a format that is appropriate for the type of study presented.
For most Living Systematic Reviews, the following standard format will be the most appropriate:
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Conclusions/Discussion
Within your article the following sections should be included to detail the ‘living’ method applied:
Justification for a ‘living’ method: Authors should justify their use of a ‘living’ method for their study in line with “When is a living systematic review worth doing?” from the Guidance for the production and publication of Cochrane living systematic reviews. Where possible evidence should be provided, either from the literature or by indicating the publication frequency for the topic of interest.
Search and update strategy: The planned search schedule should be clearly defined in the methods. The timing between searches should be clearly stated, with the exact date if this has been established. In some cases, surveillance may be automated, with manual searches occurring at less regular intervals; in these cases, the time frame for both should be stated. If searching and screening of results are not occurring simultaneously then the schedule for screening search results should also be stated.
The planned update schedule should be included within the methods. If specific parts of the article are to be updated at a different rate than the main article e.g., tables and figures, then this should be indicated. A specific statement should be prepared for each update, see Update Text section.
When the LSR will cease to be ‘living’: Authors should consider for how long they plan to maintain their LSR. While the specific point where the systematic review will cease to be ‘living’ is not necessary, as it may be difficult to predict (although if known should be stated), authors should include a statement regarding timings with their reasoning, e.g. end of current funding.
F1000Research encourages authors to register the protocol for their Living Systematic Review prospectively in the PROSPERO database. Details of the protocol registration should be included in the final living systematic review article.
F1000Research endorses the PRISMA Statement; systematic reviews and meta-analyses must adhere to these guidelines. Authors should include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram with their systematic review and this will be included in the Reporting Guidelines section of the article when published.
Reproducibility: F1000Research is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include sufficient information to allow others to reproduce the work. With this in mind, Methods sections should provide sufficient details so that the work can be repeated by others. The section should also include a brief discussion of allowances made (if any) for controlling bias or unwanted sources of variability. Any limitations of the datasets should be discussed. The use of PRISMA Flow is recommended for systematic reviews in order to show the number of records identified, included and excluded and the reasons for exclusions.
Data and Software Availability
Underlying data
All articles must include a Data Availability Statement, even where there is no data associated with the article - see our data guidelines and policies for more information.
The Data Availability Statement should provide full details of how, where, and under what conditions the data underlying the results can be accessed; for practical guidance please see our data guidelines page; and our list of approved data repositories.
Your data availability statement should follow the following format:
[Name of data repository]. [Title of dataset]. [Persistent identifier].
This project contains the following underlying data:
- Title of file. (Description of data in file).
- Title of file. (Description of data in file).
Data is available under the terms of the [Name of license].
For example:
OSF: Ethics issues identified by applicants and ethics experts in Horizon 2020 grant proposals. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/T765V (Buljan et al., 2021).
This project contains the following underlying data:
- Data file 1. Datasets.xlsx
Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero “No rights reserved” data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).
Example taken from: Buljan I, Pina DG and Marušić A. Ethics issues identified by applicants and ethics experts in Horizon 2020 grant proposals [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research 2021, 10:471 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.52965.2).
If you have deposited your dataset in a structured, subject-specific repository, for example an INSDC member repository, you may receive an accession code as a persistent identifier and a Creative Commons license will not be applicable.
In this case, your data availability statement should follow the following format:
NCBI Gene: Ihe1 intestinal helminth expulsion 1 [Mus musculus (house mouse)]. Accession number 107537.
Restricted data
Some data may be restricted for legitimate reasons including data protection, copyright or reasons related to ethics or privacy. In these cases, the Data Availability statement should provide full details of the restrictions on the data, and how, where, and under what conditions the data underlying the results can be accessed. Please provide the required information listed under the relevant exception in our data policy.
Extended data
There are no figure or table limits for articles in F1000Research. Additional materials that support the key claims in the paper but are not absolutely required to follow the study design and analysis of the results, e.g., questionnaires, supporting images or tables, can be included as extended data; descriptions of the materials and methods should be in the main article. Extended data should be in a format that supports reuse under a CC0 or Public Domain Dedication or CC-BY 4.0 Attribution-Only license. Care should be taken to ensure that the publication of extended data in this instance does not preclude primary publication elsewhere. If you intend to publish additional research articles based on the extended data with another journal, you should ensure that publishing your extended data in this way will not be considered ‘prior publication’ by your chosen journal.
If you have any extended data, please deposit these materials in an approved repository and include the title, the name of the repository, the DOI or accession number, and license in the manuscript under the subheading ‘Extended data’ using the format below. Extended data should be cited where relevant in the main text.
[Name of data repository]. [Title of dataset]. [Persistent identifier].
This project contains the following extended data:
- Title of file. (Description of data in file.)
- Title of file. (Description of data in file.)
Data is available under the terms of the [Name of license].
For practical guidance please see our data guidelines page; and our list of approved data repositories.
Please note, information which can be used to directly identify participants should not be included in underlying and extended datasets, unless they have provided explicit permission to share their details. Please see our data guidelines for further information.
Software and Code
All articles should include details of any software and code that is required to view the datasets described or to replicate the analysis. Please see our data guidelines and policies for more information.
Where software is used to process, store or analyse data, please include the version number of the software used.
Where proprietary software is used, please also include an open-access alternative that can perform the same function. We recognise that there may be cases where this may not be feasible. Please see our software availability policy for more information or contact the editorial team if this is the case.
If you are describing new software, please make the source code available on a Version Control System (VCS) such as GitHub, BitBucket or SourceForge, and provide details of the repository and the license under which the software can be used in the article. Please also deposit an archived copy of the software at the time of submission to a recognised repository. You should include a statement in the manuscript as follows:
- Software available from: URL for the website where software can be downloaded from, if applicable.
- Source code available from: URL for versioning control system (for example GitHub).
- Archived source code at time of publication: DOI and citation for project in Zenodo (please select the appropriate DOI for the version which underlies your article).
- License: Must be an open license and preferably an OSI-approved license.
Reporting Guidelines
Standards of reporting guidelines help authors to ensure that they have provided a comprehensive description of their research, making it easier for others to assess and reproduce the work; for more detail and a comprehensive overview, see the FAIRSharing initiative. Available reporting guidelines for biological research can be found using the MIBBI Foundry filter on the FAIRSharing website.
Articles in F1000Research must comply with consensus-based minimum reporting guidelines for research. Comprehensive lists of available reporting guidelines can be found on the EQUATOR network website for health research.
F1000Research endorses the endorses the PRISMA Statement; systematic reviews and meta-analyses must adhere to these guidelines. Authors should include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram with their systematic review and this will be included in the Reporting Guidelines section of the article when published.
Please deposit completed reporting checklists and flow charts in an approved general repository; include the guideline type, name of the repository, the DOI, and license in the manuscript’s Data availability statement in the style of, for example:
Repository: PRISMA checklist and flow chart for ‘Title of paper’. https://doi.org/10.5256/repository.4591.d34639.
Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero “No rights reserved” data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).
Author Contributions
We are using the CRediT Taxonomy to capture author contributions as we believe that having more detail of who did what brings transparency, enables recognition for researchers, and provides greater accountability for all involved. For more information click here.
You do not need to include an Author Contributions section in your manuscript: on submission, you will be asked for the contributions made by each author, to be selected from the list below. Anyone who has contributed but does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section.
| Contributor Role | Role Definition |
| Conceptualization | Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. |
| Data Curation | Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse. |
| Formal Analysis | Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data. |
| Funding Acquisition | Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication. |
| Investigation | Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection. |
| Methodology | Development or design of methodology; creation of models. |
| Project Administration | Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution. |
| Resources | Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools. |
| Software | Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components. |
| Supervision | Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team. |
| Validation | Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs. |
| Visualization | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation. |
| Writing – Original Draft Preparation | Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation). |
| Writing – Review & Editing | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages. |
Competing Interests
Articles published in F1000Research must not contain content that could be perceived as ‘advertising’ and must include a Competing Interests section. Any financial, personal, or professional competing interests for any of the authors that could be construed to unduly influence the content of the article must be disclosed and will be displayed alongside the article. More information on what might be construed as a competing interest is available in our editorial policies.
If you do not have any competing interests, add the text ‘No competing interests were disclosed’.
Grant Information
Please state who funded the work, whether it is your employer, a grant funder etc. Please do not list funding that you have that is not relevant to this specific piece of research. For each funder, please state the funder’s name, the grant number where applicable, and the individual to whom the grant was assigned.
If your work was not funded by any grants, please include the section entitled “Grant information” and state: ‘The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work’.
Acknowledgments
This section should acknowledge anyone who contributed to the research or the writing of the article but who does not qualify as an author; please clearly state how they contributed. Authors should obtain permission to include the name and affiliation, from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgments section. Please note that grant funding should not be listed here.
Over the course of an LSR, the author list is likely to change. We encourage authors to include previous authors in the acknowledgements section. This will ensure that authors of previous versions of the LSR receive credit for their work across versions. Their names will be maintained in the author list in previous versions prior to being removed.
The removal and addition of authors will be subject to our authorship policies.
Supplementary Material
To ensure all materials associated with a manuscript are visible, FAIR, and subject to peer review, F1000Research does not accept submission of supplementary materials. For more information, please see the extended data section in Data and Software Availability.
References and footnotes
References and footnotes can be listed in any standard style if it is consistent within a given article. We allow both references and footnotes within an article (a full reference list within text citations, and explanatory footnotes).
Our basic requirements include:
- Abbreviations and journal names should align with discipline specific standards.
- Preprints can be cited and listed in the reference list.
- Unpublished abstracts, papers that have been submitted to a journal but not yet accepted, and personal communications should instead be included in the text; they should be referred to as ‘personal communications’ or ‘unpublished work’ and the researchers involved should be named. Authors are responsible for getting permission to quote any personal communications from the cited individuals.
- Web links should be included as hyperlinks within the main body of the article, and not as references.
- Datasets published or deposited elsewhere (for example, in a general repository) should be listed in the “References” section and the citation to the dataset should follow one of these examples.
Figures and Tables
All figures and tables should be cited and discussed in the article text. There is no limit to the number of figures and tables you can have. Figure legends and tables should be added at the end of the manuscript. Tables should be formatted using the ‘Insert Table’ function in Word or provided as an Excel file. For larger tables or spreadsheets of data, please see our data guidelines for further information. Files for figures are usually best uploaded as separate files through the submission system (see below for information on formats).
Any photographs must be accompanied by written consent to publish from the individuals involved. Any distinguishing features, including medical record numbers or codes in the case of clinical images that could be used to identify the patient or participant concerned must be removed from the images.
Titles and legends: Each figure or table should have a concise title of no more than 15 words. A legend for each figure and table should also be provided that briefly describes the key points and explains any symbols and abbreviations used. The legend should be sufficiently detailed so that the figure or table can stand alone from the main text.
Permissions: If reusing a figure or table from a previous publication, the authors are responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright holder and for the payment of any fees (if applicable). Please include a note in the legend to state that: ‘This figure/table has been reproduced with permission from [include original publication citation]’.
Figure formats: For all figures, the colour mode should be RGB or grayscale.
Line art: Examples of line art include graphs, diagrams, flow charts and phylogenetic trees. Please make sure that text is at least 8pt, the lines are thick enough to be clearly seen at the size the image will likely be displayed (between 75-150 mm width, which converts to one or two columns width, respectively), and that the font size and type is consistent between images. Figures should be created using a white background to ensure that they display correctly online.
If you submit a graph, please export the graph as an EPS file using the program you used to create the graph (e.g., SPSS). If this is not possible, please send us the original file in which the graph was created (e.g., if you created the graph in Excel, send us the Excel file with the embedded graph).
If you submit other forms of line art such as flow charts, diagrams or text to be displayed as an image, please export the image as an EPS file (e.g., if creating phylogenetic trees with specialized programs), or send us the original file that was used to create the image (e.g., EPS or AI files if Adobe Illustrator was used, or a DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX or equivalent file if Word or PowerPoint was used).
If none of the above options is possible then we also accept uncompressed TIFFs with a resolution of at least 600dpi at the size they are likely to be displayed at (see above).
Photographs and microscopy images: Photographs and microscopy images should be submitted as uncompressed TIFFs with a resolution of at least 300dpi at the size they are likely to be displayed (see above).
Mixed images: Images that are a mix of half-tone images and line art (e.g., annotated gels or images with scale bars) should be submitted as TIFF files at a resolution of 500dpi or vector files (e.g. EPS or Adobe Illustrator files). Please ensure that the text size is at least 8pt and lines are thick enough to be clearly visible at the size the image will be displayed.
Images to be used as data: If you are submitting photographic images as part of your raw dataset, please submit them as uncompressed TIFF files.
Electronic manipulation of images: The clarity of figures may be improved using image-editing software, but this must be done transparently and without misrepresenting the data (and the original, unaltered source data must be provided with the article). Brightness, contrasts or colour balance may be used to enhance electronic images, but such changes must be applied to the whole image; any non-linear adjustments must be made explicit in the figure legend. Specific features within an image must not be added or changed (e.g., amplified, removed or obscured); and if figures are composed from images that have come from different sources, such as different gels, or from different parts of the same source, this must be made clear on the figure (e.g., by adding dividing lines). Authors are required to include details of all modifications made to images published as figures or uploaded as data in the Methods section of an article, including the name of the software (with version number) used to make these modifications. Please see our Policies on Image Manipulation for more information.
Changes between versions
Once the content of an LSR has undergone peer review and been approved, the majority of the article should remain unchanged throughout the life course of the article. Acceptable changes include updating methods to include the new search date, updating the results, updating tables and figures, and revising the discussion and conclusion should new evidence become available. Further changes may be accepted at editorial discretion.
Loss of ‘living’ status
The living status of an article must be maintained by the author throughout the life course of the LSR. Failure to do so may result in the ‘living’ status being removed. Possible reasons for an article losing its living status include, but are not limited to:
- Missing update dates
- Changes deviating from the original research question
- A series of updates performed with no new evidence found (the decision to remove the ‘living’ status would be made following a round of peer review. See Peer review section)
- Peer reviewers feel the topic is no longer appropriate for a living method (See Peer review section)
- The article has completed its planned update schedule (the update schedule can be extended at editorial discretion)
The decision to remove the ‘living’ status will be made at editorial decision following input from authors and reviewers.
Peer Review
Baseline review
The baseline review of an LSR will be assessed in the same manner as a standard systematic review with the addition of questions pertaining to the ‘living’ method applied. These will focus on if the use of a ‘living’ method is appropriate and if the search schedule is clearly defined and justified.
Revisions
As with all articles, authors will have the opportunity to revise their article in response to reviewer comments. We strongly encourage authors to address the reviewers' criticisms by publishing revised versions and/or by adding author comments to the peer review reports.
Updates
Searches performed as part of an LSR following publication of the initial baseline review can result in one of three outcomes:
- Search returns no new studies;
- Search returns new studies, but the findings do not affect the previous conclusions;
- Search returns new studies that change the previous conclusions.
Scenarios 1 and 2 will not require a new round of peer review in the majority of cases. Scenario 3 will always trigger a new round of peer review.
The decision of when a new round of peer review should be started will be dependent on the update schedule. However, no LSR should go longer than a year without a new review. This is to ensure that any minor changes between updates have been reviewed and the living method is still appropriate, especially in scenario 1. If reviewers deem a ‘living’ method to no longer be appropriate, the ‘living’ status may be removed (see Loss of ‘living’ status).
Submitting new versions
Please see our Article guidelines for New Versions for further information regarding how you can submit both Revisions and Updates.
Reviewers
We will aim to maintain the same reviewers across versions for as long as is feasible to ensure consistency between versions. Reviewers will be informed upon invitation of the ‘living’ method, and will be reminded that this will involve providing multiple reports over time.