Contact: Ian Shemilt
The Bristol-UCL-King's Living Evidence Synthesis (BUcKLES) Group is a specialised research group funded to produce living evidence syntheses (LES) on behalf of the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme. It is a collaboration between researchers based in Bristol (University of Bristol | UWE) and London (EPPI-Centre | King's College London) and is closely aligned with NIHR Evidence Synthesis Groups, including the London Alliance for the Co-Production of Evidence Synthesis (LACES) and the Bristol Evidence Synthesis Group.
See also the University of Bristol BUcKLES web page.
The BUcKLES Group also hosts the ESGs Best Practice Working Group on LES, including the LES Toolkit.
Living evidence synthesis
Living evidence synthesis (LES) is a general approach to keeping evidence synthesis continually updated with new evidence as it becomes available. The most common types of LES are living systematic reviews and living evidence maps. However, in principle, any type of evidence synthesis can be conducted in living mode. Criteria for considering a LES approach are similar for living systematic reviews and living evidence maps:
For living systematic reviews:-
- New research evidence is continually emerging (or expected to emerge) over a sustained period of time.
- Certainty of the existing body of evidence is (expected to be) low or very low.
- The review questions are (expected to be) of sufficient importance to decision-making to justify an ongoing allocation of resources.
For living evidence maps:-
- New research evidence is continually emerging (or expected to emerge) over a sustained period of time.
- There is (expected to be) uncertainty about key characteristics of the existing body of evidence (e.g. what kinds of new studies are there?; and how is this changing over time?).
- There is (expected to be) sufficient importance to end-users in being continually updated with information about the evolving key characteristics of the emerging body of evidence to justify an ongoing allocation of resources (e.g. to inform decisions by researchers and/or funders about what kinds of further research are, and aren’t, needed).
BUcKLES people based at the EPPI Centre
