Services / Umbrella reviews
Umbrella review services
All prices are custom to the service. Fees and timelines are set for each project once the question has been scoped and its feasibility checked, so the quote reflects the evidence that actually exists.
Meridian Research Consultancy conducts umbrella reviews, also called overviews of systematic reviews, for health, medical and exercise science research, from protocol to a manuscript that is ready for peer review.
An umbrella review synthesises reviews rather than trials, so its particular risks are overlap, where the same primary studies are counted many times, and reviews of uneven quality pointing in different directions. Both are measured and handled explicitly rather than left to the discussion section.
An umbrella review takes one of two forms. A general umbrella review appraises and summarises what the included reviews report. A hybrid umbrella review also goes back to their primary studies, removes the duplicates and pools them in a new meta-analysis.
What we deliver
- A registered protocol stating how overlapping and discordant reviews will be handled
- A search for systematic reviews across bibliographic databases and review registries
- Overlap mapped with a citation matrix and the corrected covered area
- Methodological quality or risk of bias appraised in duplicate with AMSTAR 2 or ROBIS
- General: results summarised review by review, with certainty reconciled across reviews
- Hybrid: primary studies de-duplicated across reviews and re-analysed in a new meta-analysis
- Certainty or credibility of the evidence graded and stated for each outcome
- A manuscript reported to PRIOR, the reporting guideline for overviews of reviews
How a project runs
- Topic and protocol. The research question (PICO) is confirmed, feasibility is checked, and a publication-ready protocol is written and registered.
- Analysis and drafting. Systematic search, screening, data extraction and statistical analysis, including network meta-analysis or meta-regression, then the full manuscript.
- Review and refinement. You review the draft, and revisions continue without limit until it is ready for submission.
- Submission and peer review. Cover letter and submission support, then additional analyses and point-by-point responses to reviewers until a decision.
Scope and fees
Umbrella reviews are Tier 6, general or hybrid. The size of the work depends on how many reviews qualify and how much they overlap, and for a hybrid review on how many primary studies are pooled.
All prices are custom to the service. Fees and timelines are set for each project once the question has been scoped and its feasibility checked, so the quote reflects the evidence that actually exists.
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