Systematic review support for your dissertation or thesis

Most dissertation reviews that fail do so at the scoping stage, months before anyone notices. A question that would occupy a funded team for a year cannot be answered by one student in an academic cycle, and the symptoms appear late: a search yield of twenty thousand records, screening that swallows the analysis time, a synthesis rushed in the final weeks. We pressure-test the question first, against the realistic timeline in our guide to how long a systematic review takes, and tell you plainly if it needs narrowing by population, setting, comparator, or outcome before it is winnable. A precise question answered rigorously earns far more credit than an ambitious one answered thinly, and it is also easier to defend.

The scoped question then goes into a proper, pre-specified systematic review protocol, the document your supervisor approves and your methods chapter is later built from. Pre-specifying the criteria, the search plan, and the intended synthesis is what protects you in the viva, because it shows the decisions were made in advance rather than fitted to the results.

A committee reads a dissertation review against the published standards, and the gap between a narrative essay and a systematic method is the first thing an experienced examiner checks; our comparison of a systematic review versus a literature review sets out that line. Concretely, they expect a reproducible search, a PRISMA flow diagram whose numbers reconcile, explicit eligibility criteria applied consistently, a recognised appraisal tool used properly, and a synthesis that follows from the extracted data rather than from a preferred conclusion. They also expect the student to know the method, not merely to have survived it, which shapes how we deliver: every component arrives with its reasoning written out, following the sequence in our guide to the steps in a systematic review.

The hardest requirement for a solo student is the one the method is built on: screening, extraction, and appraisal are meant to be done by two independent reviewers, and examiners ask who the second reviewer was. Supervisors rarely have time to screen thousands of records, and recruiting a fellow student is unreliable. Our second reviewer service resolves this directly: you screen as the first reviewer, we screen the same records blind to your decisions, conflicts are reconciled against your criteria, and you report the process with a Cohen’s kappa agreement figure and a conflict log. Your methods chapter can then describe dual independent review truthfully, which is a far stronger position than defending single screening or claiming a process that did not happen.

You commission the stages you need and keep authorship of the whole. Each component is delivered done-for-you, with the working shown.

1. 1

   Comprehensive literature search

   A search strategy built and run across the right databases by our specialists, delivered with the full strategy per database, the yield, and deduplication records, ready for your appendix.

2. 2

   Screening and second-reviewer support

   Dual screening support at both stages, with decisions, exclusion reasons, agreement statistics, and reconciled PRISMA flow counts documented for your methods chapter.

3. 3

   Data extraction and appraisal

   Extraction tables built and populated in duplicate, and study quality assessed with the tool your field expects, each judgement recorded with its justification.

4. 4

   Analysis and synthesis

   A narrative synthesis or, where the studies support it, a meta-analysis with forest plots, heterogeneity, and sensitivity analyses, delivered with an explanation of every analytic choice.

A dissertation is an examined qualification, so we are explicit about where our role stops. We do not impersonate you, and we do not hand over a finished thesis with your name on it. You remain the author: you set the question, approve every criterion, make the final call on every disputed record, and write the chapters in your own voice. What we deliver is the commissioned research components, executed to professional standard, with full documentation and the rationale for each decision written out, the same footing a student with a well-staffed research team would enjoy. That framing is not a disclaimer; it is what makes the work defensible. An examiner can probe any decision in the review and you will have the record, and the reasoning, to answer from.

It also means we will push back when a request would undermine you. If a committee-mandated method is wrong for the evidence, we say so with reasons you can take to your supervisor. If pooling is inappropriate, we advise a narrative synthesis rather than manufacturing a meta-analysis that will not survive the viva, because the person defending it will be you.

• A scoped, committee-ready question and a pre-specified protocol document
• A reproducible search record: strategies per database, yields, and deduplication counts
• Dual-reviewer screening records, exclusion logs, kappa, and reconciled PRISMA flow counts
• Extraction tables and quality appraisals with a written justification per judgement
• The synthesis or meta-analysis outputs with every analytic decision explained
• A decision log covering the whole review, organised for viva preparation

We quote a fixed fee per component, shaped by the breadth of the question, the expected search yield, the number of studies likely to reach quality and risk-of-bias appraisal, and whether the synthesis needs meta-analysis and forest plots or remains narrative. If you are still orienting yourself, our guide to how to write a systematic review maps the whole process. Send us your draft question, your submission date, and your programme’s requirements, and we will return a component-by-component plan and a fixed quote with no obligation to proceed.