Systematic review consulting for reviews that are stuck

Most of our clients on this service do not want to hand their review away. It is their question, their author team, and often their thesis or grant deliverable. What they lack is a methodologist who has taken dozens of reviews through peer review and can see, quickly, why this one is stuck. That is the gap this service fills: you keep ownership and authorship of the review, and we supply the methodological muscle at the stages where it is missing. When a team would rather commission the whole project instead, our complete systematic review service is the better fit, and we will say so if your situation points that way.

The consultant you are assigned is a named methodologist, works on your review personally, and stays with it across engagements, so the person who repaired your protocol is the same person who later checks the analysis built on it. Nothing is passed through a pool of anonymous freelancers, and nothing is delegated to someone you have not been introduced to.

Reviews rarely fail everywhere at once; they fail at a stage. These are the six briefs we see most often, and each one maps to a concrete deliverable rather than a conversation. If your situation spans several of them, a single engagement can cover the whole chain from protocol repair through to the resubmitted manuscript.

Two of these deserve a note on timing. Protocol rescue pays for itself many times over because every defect in a protocol compounds through screening, extraction, and analysis, so the earlier it is fixed the less has to be redone. Pre-submission verification works the other way: it is the least expensive engagement on this page precisely because it catches problems while they still cost a correction rather than a rejection, months of resubmission, and a burned journal.

The word consulting often implies advice: a call, a memo, a list of suggestions you must then carry out yourself. That is not what this service is. Every engagement is done-for-you and ends in a finished artefact: the corrected protocol, the completed screening decisions, the rebuilt meta-analysis with its code and outputs, the written methods section, the point-by-point reviewer response. We do not run tutoring sessions, coaching programmes, or advisory calls, because a document you can submit is worth more than an hour of talk about one. All scoping and delivery happens in writing, which also gives you a precise record of what was assessed, what was changed, and why.

The statistical side of that promise is carried by our systematic review statistics service, which handles heterogeneity, subgroup and sensitivity analyses, and publication-bias assessment, and the appraisal side by our risk-of-bias assessment service. When an engagement needs an independent second screener to satisfy dual independent review expectations, our second reviewer service supplies one, with the disagreement log journals increasingly ask to see.

Because we are joining work that already exists, every engagement begins with a diagnostic assessment rather than a quote from a price list. The diagnosis protects you both ways: you are never charged for repairing stages that are actually sound, and you are never sold a small fix when the defect runs deeper than the symptom you noticed.

1. 1

   Send the review as it stands

   You share the protocol, the search, the screening records, the draft, or whatever exists, together with a short note on where it is stuck and any reviewer comments.

2. 2

   Diagnostic assessment

   The methodologist audits what you sent, identifies exactly which stages are sound and which are defective, and returns a written diagnosis with a fixed quote for the repair.

3. 3

   The repair is done for you

   We produce the corrected deliverables for the agreed stages, keeping you informed in writing and putting every methodological decision to you for approval.

4. 4

   Handover and verification

   You receive the finished documents plus a change log explaining what was altered and why, so the review is stronger and you can defend every decision in it as your own.

The two services share the same methodologists and the same standards; they differ in how much of the review we carry. The table shows where each fits, and moving from one to the other mid-engagement is straightforward if your circumstances change.

The package depends on the stages engaged, but every deliverable is a finished, usable document. Reviews stall for predictable reasons, and if you want to sanity-check your own project first, our walkthrough of the steps in a systematic review and our guide to risk-of-bias assessment in practice show what each stage should look like when it is done properly.

• A written diagnostic report on the review as it stands, stage by stage
• Corrected, submission-ready documents for every engaged stage: protocol, search, screening, extraction, appraisal, analysis, or methods section
• Completed risk-of-bias judgements with the tool choice justified in writing
• Rebuilt statistical analyses with code, outputs, and plain-language interpretation
• Point-by-point responses to journal reviewers with the manuscript corrections made
• A change log recording what was altered and why, so the review remains yours to defend

We quote a fixed fee for the defined piece of work rather than an open-ended hourly arrangement, so the cost is known before the repair begins. The number reflects the genuine load: how many stages are defective, the volume of records or studies involved, whether the analysis must be rebuilt, and how much writing is needed. Send the review in whatever state it is in, together with the deadline and any reviewer comments, and a PhD methodologist will return a diagnosis, a plan, and a fixed quote with no obligation to proceed. If the diagnostic shows the review is fundamentally sound, we say so; a short verification report is a perfectly good outcome, and some engagements end exactly there.