Technical Standards for Integrating Automation Tools for Evidence Synthesis

Systematic review and meta-analysis are powerful tools to provide an unbiased overview of all available literature addressing a specific research question. However, systematic reviews are resource-intensive. To address this, the development of automation tools to aid systematic review research is increasing. But despite the development of these automation tools, recent research suggests that uptake of these tools is slow among evidence synthesis researchers and are potential barriers to using automation tools which include: steep learning curve, mismatched workflow, and lack of support. Here we propose a set of standards for automation tools and platforms that have been built to aid the systematic review community. The aim of these standards is to improve the integration of different tools into the research process and to increase transparency in the field of automation tools for evidence synthesis. The technical standards set out a minimum level and format of documentation required for publishing and disseminating automation tools. Further, we present an orchestrator platform, the Integration Interface, a system to bring compliant automation tools together, independent of programming language, into a succinct workflow. The Integration Interface aims to reduce the barriers associated with using a single or multiple automation tools in the evidence synthesis research process.