Review authors should carefully justify their rationale for including NRS in their systematic review.
Review authors should consult the editorial policy of the CRG under which they propose to register their protocol concerning inclusion of NRS. Authors should consider the extent of methodological advice available in the CRG and the methodological support they have in their team.
Review authors should specify eligibility criteria based on what researchers did (i.e. important aspects of study design), as well as factors relating to the specific review question of interest (i.e. intervention, population, health problem), to avoid ambiguity. We suggest that authors use the items in the NRSMG checklist, or a similar checklist, to do this.
Review authors also need information about what researchers did in primary studies to categorize the studies identified. We suggest that authors use the NRSMG lists of study design features, or a similar tool, for these purposes, and record when important aspects of study design are unclear or not reported.
Authors reviewing questions about the adverse effects (harms) of interventions should read Chapter 14.