Capabilities
What Julie does
What Julie prepares, what comes back to you, and what stays your call.
EXAMPLE · A GUIDELINE UPDATEEleven questions and one methodologist, with no second reviewer to share the reading. From planning the search to drafting the manuscript, this is what Julie takes on and what stays with you.
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Drafts your eligibility criteria from your questions
Julie writes the first draft of your inclusion and exclusion criteria from your research questions, so you are not starting from a blank page.
What you get: you settle the final wording yourself, and every screening decision that follows is made against your words. A draft is not a criterion until you approve it.
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Prepares search strategies for three databases
Julie helps turn your research questions and the scope you confirm into draft strategies for PubMed, Embase and CENTRAL in the Cochrane Library.
What you get: a strategy for each database, with its search settings and a record of your approval. You review the drafts, approve the final strategies and run the searches.
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Screens every record twice
Every record is assessed twice against your criteria. Disagreements and uncertain cases come to you for a documented decision.
What you get: dual screening with human adjudication, statable in your methods section even with no second person, and a list holding only the genuinely contested records.
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Checks your criteria before the full run
You receive a screening quality assessment before committing to the full review.
What you get: an opportunity to review screening quality and settle your criteria before the full review proceeds.
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Measures what agreement cannot tell you
Julie reports screening quality in terms that help you assess whether relevant evidence is being retained.
What you get: an assessment of missed eligible records, alongside agreement, to inform your decision to proceed.
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Extracts data with the quote it rests on
Each study is read twice, and every extracted statement arrives with the sentence and the page it came from. On the CEBM route you can also correct how a study relates to your questions. Your correction is preserved; if the question changes, it needs review before it can be used again.
What you get: a chain from any claim in the manuscript back to one verified sentence on one page.
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Assesses evidence in its methodological context
Julie works with two published standards, and you choose one for each project: Oxford CEBM for study-level evidence levels and strength of recommendation, or GRADE for the certainty of each body of evidence, outcome by outcome. Both can also be applied to the same literature, each with its own workbook and its own methods report. Risk of bias is appraised with the official instrument the design implies: RoB 2, ROBINS-I, QUADAS-2 or JBI.
What you get: a documented evidence assessment, with its source support, methodological rationale and your approvals recorded.
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Prepares the panel meeting
On the CEBM route, Julie produces a dossier for each question and a brief the panel can read before it sits down; the brief is written to be circulated, the dossiers stay internal. On the GRADE route, she prepares an evidence profile, a Summary of Findings table and an Evidence-to-Decision framework, with the certainty of the evidence already entered.
What you get: after the meeting you record the decision and final wording of each recommendation; on GRADE, the panel's direction, strength and rationale go into the Evidence-to-Decision framework under a person's name. Julie then ties the evidence to what the panel actually agreed.
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Prepares a traceable manuscript draft
The Discussion draft reflects the agreed recommendations and the evidence behind them. Unresolved issues are brought to your attention for author review.
What you get: no citation or figure in the draft without a trace back to its source, and a ledger naming every recommendation that went undiscussed.
A statement, with its source in reach.
A layout example, not a study or a live output. The placeholders show how a reader can follow a statement back to its source.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACT
- Study
- [Study reference]
- Extracted statement
- [Statement drawn from the study]
- Source quotation
[The supporting passage, with its page reference]
- Researcher review
- [Recorded decision and reviewer name]
And throughout: you always know where the review stands
Which stage it is in, which materials have been prepared, what is missing, and which decisions and author review are still yours to complete. If an input changes, Julie shows you what needs another look. You can also see what has been spent so far.
If you are running a systematic review, sitting on a guideline panel, or working in an evidence synthesis unit, tell us what you are working on.