Systematic reviews that hold up
under scrutiny.
Automate the entire systematic review workflow: literature search,
screening, data extraction, and meta-analysis
The systematic review is the gold standard of evidence in research. It's also one of the most time-consuming and costly things a researcher will ever do with an average of 68 weeks to complete. We rebuilt the entire pipeline into a sub 2-hour conversation. Scholara is already used and trusted by thousands of researchers, completing systematic reviews in hours.
Describe your research question in plain language and Scholara builds the protocol with you. It extracts your PICO, sets your inclusion and exclusion criteria, and lets you edit any of it inline before a single database is searched.
Scholara writes a real MeSH and Boolean search, and runs it across PubMed, Europe PMC, OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials(dot)gov. It then screens every result against your criteria, assessing abstracts first, then progressing to full text.
Scholara generates the characteristics tables, comparisons and meta-analysis plots. You would normally build these by hand in a separate tool, now they're drawn straight from the studies you just included.
For each study, Scholara shows exactly why it was included, excluded, or marked uncertain, against your own criteria. Borderline studies are never quietly dropped, and transparency is always prioritized.
Every screened study is available directly inside Scholara, available to read next to its screening decision, with the option to override the call if you disagree.
Scholara builds a PRISMA flow diagram automatically from your real numbers, updating as your review changes, which are ready to drop straight into your paper.
Systematic Review
A systematic review is a research method for answering a focused question by finding, selecting, evaluating, and synthesizing all relevant studies using a predefined, transparent process.
In simpler terms:
A systematic review is not just “reading many papers.” It is a structured way to answer a question like:
“Does treatment X improve outcome Y in population Z?”
It usually includes:
A precise research question
Example: “Does denosumab slow osteoarthritis progression in adults?”
A search strategy
Which databases were searched, which keywords were used, and what dates were included.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Which studies count, and which do not.
Screening
Researchers review titles, abstracts, and full texts.
Quality assessment
They evaluate whether the included studies are reliable or biased.
Synthesis
They summarize what the evidence shows.
A meta-analysis is a possible next step: it uses statistics to combine the results of the included studies. So:
Systematic review = structured evidence review.
Meta-analysis = statistical combination of results, when possible.
A systematic review happens when researchers want to answer a focused question by reviewing all the available evidence in a rigorous way.
Typical situations:
1. When there are many studies and you need clarity
For example: many papers study bisphosphonates and osteoarthritis, but results are mixed. A systematic review tries to organize the evidence.
2. Before making clinical or policy recommendations
Medical guidelines often rely on systematic reviews because they show the full evidence, not just one selected study.
3. When planning new research
Researchers do a systematic review to see what is already known and where the gaps are.
4. When comparing treatments or interventions
Example:
“Does denosumab reduce osteoarthritis progression compared with placebo or other antiresorptives?”
5. When evidence is scattered across different databases
The review searches PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane, etc., then filters the results.
The sequence is usually:
Research question
→ Search all relevant studies
→ Remove duplicates
→ Screen titles and abstracts
→ Read full texts
→ Exclude weak or irrelevant papers
→ Assess quality/bias
→ Summarize the evidence
→ Optional: meta-analysis
So: a systematic review happens after enough individual studies exist that you need a structured method to understand the total evidence.
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