Glossary
Project
Each project is specific to your systematic review and meta-analysis. Upload your deduplicated studies and add stages to screen and annotate your data.
Public Project
A project that can be seen by anyone with a SyRF account. In the current version of SyRF, other users can request to join a public project and can join without any requirement for approval from project owners.
Private Project
A project that is only visible to SyRF users that are members of the project.
Protocol
A structured description of what you set out to do in your systematic review and meta-analysis, which should be finalised before you start your systematic review. We recommend that this is published or shared publicly with PROSPERO.
Screening
Screening refers to making a decision whether to include or exclude a study retrieved in your systematic search based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria defined in your protocol. Screening is described in more detail in Screening
Annotation
You may want to annotate your studies by labelling or extracting relevant information from them. This part of a systematic review project is fairly flexible and therefore you can define your own annotation questions. Annotation questions should address all questions you want to ask as specified in your protocol. You can choose at which stage of the project you want to answer specific annotation questions. This is described in more detail in Annotation.
Data Extraction
The process of capturing quantitative data from studies for meta-analysis. This includes outcome measurements (means or medians), error values (SD, SEM, or IQR), and metadata (units, timepoints). Enable data extraction in stage settings to access the full annotation hierarchy with Experiment, Cohort, Disease Model, Treatment, and Outcome Assessment categories. See Stage Settings - Data Extraction for how to enable this feature.
Experiment
An experiment refers to any grouping of cohorts where an experiment is carried out at the same time and any of them can be compared with each other. When data extraction is enabled, experiments link to cohorts via lookup questions in the annotation form.
Cohort
A cohort refers to a group of animals - same species, strain, source, co-morbidities (if applicable) - which all receive the same procedure and treatments and can be compared to other cohorts. For example, an experiment may involve the following cohorts:
Example Experiment 1:
- Cohort 1: Treatment (Disease Model + Treatment)
- Cohort 2: Sham
- Cohort 3: Control (Disease Model + Vehicle)
Example Experiment 2:
- Cohort 1: Control (Disease Model + Vehicle)
- Cohort 2: Treatment 1 (Disease Model + Treatment 1)
- Cohort 3: Treatment 2 (Disease Model + Treatment 2)
Cohorts are created in SyRF projects by combining disease models and treatment details. When data extraction is enabled, cohorts link to disease models, treatments, and outcomes via lookup questions, and include the number of animals in the group.
Outcome Data
Quantitative measurements extracted from studies, stored for each Experiment-Cohort-Outcome combination. Outcome data includes timepoints with average values (mean or median) and error values (SD, SEM, or IQR). This data is used for meta-analysis calculations.
TimePoint
A single measurement at a specific time during an experiment. Each timepoint contains three values: time (when the measurement was taken), average (the mean or median value), and error (the variability measure such as SD, SEM, or IQR).
Lookup Question
A special question type that displays options from another category. For example, “Select Disease Models” shows all disease model labels you have created in the Disease Model tab. You must create units in their respective tabs before they appear as options in lookup questions. Lookup questions enable the linking of experiments to cohorts, and cohorts to disease models, treatments, and outcomes.