Year End Message — Systematic Review Consultants LTD: 2024
Today, I play my Christmas songs playlist and start reflecting on another year behind while drinking my coffee on the treadmill! It's hard to be organized when one turns on the holiday mind, but I try.
Change of Address and Office
This year, our office moved to Oxford to be closer to the heart of academia and skilled experts in evidence synthesis.
Consultants
Now, we have 92 registered skilled consultants who are willing to share their skills with you on your funded projects. The consultants are based in five continents and can work at any time zone.
Long-Term Trusting Clients
We made progress towards our goal of providing affordable evidence synthesis services for a wider range of clients, including our long-term partners:
Germany
Our 12-year collaboration with Stefan's team at Technische Universität München (TUM) brought us five projects this year. All the tasks have now been delivered.
Japan
Again, our 12-year trust with Cochrane Japan continued with two more projects. Thank you, Erika.
WHO
We have been working with WHO for about 11 years now. The latest work was on a guideline related to rheumatic heart disease and rheumatic fever.
Led by UCL, thanks to Rui, most reviews related to WHO's clinical practice guideline on rheumatic heart disease and rheumatic fever have been published (+ + + + +), and the guideline itself is live, with an appendix for unpublished reviews. Thank you, Ghazaleh, Brian, Katairo, Rachel, Fang, and Petra.
Australia
Thanks to Fiona, we started collaborating with Melbourne University and Monash University about 9 years ago and here we are still working together. We worked on two projects with Monash this year.
University of Nottingham and NHS
We have been working with Nottingham for 6 years, and this year, we directly worked on one project. In addition, thanks to Eirini, we had a chance to contribute to an NIHR-funded project with the University and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
Technopolis, France
Thanks to Laura, we started collaborating with this consultancy 3 years ago and bid on multiple projects, two of which were successful. One of them was funded by Wellcome and is now published in Wellcome Open Research.
Schuttellaar and Partners, Belgium
Again, thanks to Laura and Bea, we worked on a project with our three-year partner in Belgium, which is due to be published.
Ramboll US
Thanks to Matthew, We closed a 3-year project with Ramboll US with a publication to show that sometimes you should not go for meta-analysis. Even though there are four published meta-analyses, it doesn't make meta-analysis the right choice, and you may need to go for a SWiM (Synthesis Without Meta-analysis). Thank you, Anna, Ghazaleh, Sebastian, Raju, Brice, and Evrard.
First Collaborations
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Thanks to Amelia, we delivered our first project with the Icahn School of Medicine. We hope to continue working with this prestigious organization.
Four Prestigious Medical Organizations
We started collaborating with four medical organizations and completed work for two of them. We will complete more work in the coming year—more details will be provided in 2025.
Crohn & Colitis UK
We had our first job with this charity. Thank you, Ghazaleh and Tina. We are still waiting for one more peer reviewer for the scientometric work we did with a UK Charity (Crohn & Colitis UK). If you can peer review it, please message me. Looking forward to more collaboration in the future.
EmpiricBio, US
We started a multi-stage project with EmpiricBio and delivered the work during the last year. Thank you, Ana, Ghazaleh, and Arun.
Rutgers University
For the first time, we collaborated with Rutgers University, and the work has now been published. Thank you, Rachel and Tilly, and Congratulations on Graduation, Dr. Tilly Fox.
The Oxford Foot and Ankle Centre
We also had our first work with The Oxford Foot and Ankle Centre. The first Oxford-based project since we moved to Oxford!
Freebies
The community is all we have. Growing within this community, we are committed to helping the community members grow. If there is any extra money in our account, we will continue providing free stuff. Ideally, we want to pay for tools, training, conference registration, and so on as much as we can; however, our budget is limited and depends on how many projects we are getting each year. So, when you are working with us, you are also funding the community.
Free Access to Automation Tools
We paid to provide access to multiple automation tools for 4 review teams who did not have funding for such tools, even though they were not working with us.
GAJET List
We started GAJET List in November 2023 and have now celebrated its first birthday. This is the list of 130 MEDLINE-index peer-reviewed journals that are free for authors and readers. Special thanks to McGill and Yale Universities and many more for linking and mentioning the GAJET List on their websites.
AI in Evidence Synthesis Webinars
While AI and LLM caused panic in the community, we had a series of webinars on responsible use of AI in Evidence Synthesis and Systematic Reviews. We were surprised with the number of those who registered and attended, and so we decided to record and release them on our YouTube channel, to which I'm sure you are all subscribed to stay up to date with the most recent developments.
Here are the recorded ones (+ + +).
There will be more useful webinars and videos. I’m not going to spoil them for you; however, not to miss anything, please stay subscribed to our YouTube.
AI In Evidence Synthesis Newsletter
With help from Thomas Krichel, currently based in New York, we created a newsletter. You can subscribe and receive weekly email with the list of papers related to using AI in evidence synthesis in your inbox. The list is free and open but private, so we cannot see your names or email addresses. You can subscribe and/or see the previous 13 issues at the following link:
https://biomed.news/bims-arines
Oral History of Evidence Synthesis and Evidence-Based Medicine
This is the surprise I told you about in the last year's message.
Speaking of YouTube, we started a series of interviews with the pioneers and leaders in our field, and believe me, you don't want to miss it. As soon as you start listening to Professor Gene V Glass telling the story of meta-analysis, you will know what I'm talking about. The setting, editing, and releasing of the interviews are time-consuming, and you can support us by subscribing to our channel. More interviews are coming in 2025.
Link to Oral History of Evidence Synthesis and Evidence-Based Medicine Playlist
Oral History of Automation of Evidence Synthesis
If you think your Christmas gift ends here, you wish! We started another series to interview the leaders of automation. More interviews are coming in 2025. Thank you, Eitan, for the idea.
Link to Oral History of Automation of Evidence Synthesis Playlist
Search-Resistant Concepts
A new concept for a very old practice was introduced and published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine—a gift to the Library and Information Science and Information Retrieval community.
Surprise for 2025
Last year, we told you we would have a surprise, and we had two Oral History series released. Next year, there will be another surprise for our global community to help everyone in our field.
The last words
Like any other year in our lives, this one passed fast, and the next year will be even faster and more eventful.
Let's remember those who are not among us and send positive thoughts to those who had a diagnosis or relapse and those whose condition is in remission. Life can be hard at some points or could become very bright at times. Let's remember that 'it will pass.' Everything will pass, every low or high moment. When you are at a low point, remember the high points and that they will come back. When you are at a high point, remember what you have been through to be so strong. Life is short. Let's not waste it worrying about the things that may never happen. Let's not compare our lives to others; there will always be those in better or worse situations, but all will pass. Let's stay positive, give hope to everyone, and remember that hope could be the only reason left for many to continue. While we may not owe anyone anything and the others don't owe anything to us, let's give generously and don't bother if there is no take for all your giving.
Be the sun shining over everyone with no expectations, unlike the moon, expecting the sun to shine on it and has no light for itself but the reflection of the sunlight.
Thank you for reading this and working with us for another year. Whatever project you work on with us, you are helping the community of practitioners and researchers get more freebies. We will continue to fund and support the community, and we are able to do so because you work with us and support us.
We pray the new year will bring you and the world more happiness, more thoughtfulness, more mindfulness, and more peace. Human beings are lost; we pray for them to be found.
On behalf of the team at Systematic Review Consultants LTD,
Season's Greetings and Happy 2025 in advance :)
I started writing this in the morning with coffee and now sign off with a cup of tea and mince pie.
Farhad
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