Papers of the Week

Systematic reviews are necessary to synthesize available evidence and inform clinical practice and health policy decisions. There has been an explosion of evidence available in many fields; this makes it challenging to keep evidence syntheses up to date and useful. Comparative effectiveness systematic reviews are informative, however producing these often-large reviews bring intense time and resource demands. This commentary describes the implementation of a systematic review using a collaborative model of evidence synthesis. We are implementing the collaborative review model to update a large Cochrane review investigating the efficacy and comparative effectiveness of exercise treatment design, delivery, and type characteristics for people with chronic low back pain. Three key benefits of the collaborative review model for evidence synthesis are: 1. team coordination and collaboration, 2. quality control measures, and 3. advanced comparative and other analyses. This new collaborative review model is developed and implemented to produce and share high-quality, comparative evidence more efficiently while building capacity and community within a research field.