Check these papers:

https://archpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2049-3258-72-39

https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/32/3/448/1555290

Six to 12 months is not a bad estimate for the time needed to perform a systematic review. Of course, the time will be affected by the research question and how many studies are out there addressing that question. Also, is the systematic review a full-time job or a part-time one? For me, they are usually part-time jobs and thus, I have seen some reviews taking closer to two years. Also, a systematic review requires at least two people to be involved in several steps of the review and coordinating people's efforts takes time.

No, registering with Prospero is not mandatory in order to get published in a quality journal. However, it is not a bad thing to do and you should check with journals you think you might publish in to see what their requirements are. Journal requirements vary from field to field.

I agree with Gordon that registration on PROSPERO is not necessary to publish your SLR however as a learning tool I recommend my postgrads to register so that they are forced to think about the framework involved here. I think the timeline depends on the number of studies that meet your inclusion criteria but for a review of 5-10 studies then 4-6 months should get it done.

Coding the literature takes most of the time in conducting an SLR.

You can control for that by defining a set of criteria, so you collect a reasonable number of articles/reports to analyze.

Do not hesitate to let me know if you need help with the methodological part of the paper.

Good luck!

All depends on search strategy, capacity for dupilcate study screening for inclusion, data extraction, risk of bias assessment and metaanalysis in stata. Time is also required for report writing. Time csn be as low as 4 months and as long as 18 months

Thanks to all for sharing valuable informations.

You might have already at some stage with your manuscript, however, I would like to inform you about some points really important before starting to write your manuscript.

First, post literature search you should make tables which summarize the studies been done before. This will help you not only in knowing what all matter you have to write upon also, but it will also help you save time in going through literature again and again.

Secondly, try keeping your SR around 4000-6000 words which is usually the limit for most journals with higher impacts.

For your reference, you can go through the following paper.

Article Overview of sleep disturbances and their management in Parki...

Mostly, it depends on the topic and on your research experience.

It is estimated that it usually takes between 6 and 18 months to complete a systematic literature review. For PROSPERO-registered reviews, it has been calculated that the time to complete the project and publish the research findings can be, on average, 67.3 weeks (around 15-16 months). Don't forget that registering your review protocol is always a good research practice, but you don't have to necessarily do it in PROSPERO (a valid and free alternative may be, for example, the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/).

Here you can find the typical timeline of a Cochrane review:

https://researchguides.library.tufts.edu/SystematicReviews

In general, on the basis of my experience, the following points well summarize the most important time-consuming steps of conducting a literature review and how to avoid excessive delays:

• The process of article selection (HINT: plan an effective search strategy to narrow down the number of screened items as much as possible).
• Data extraction (HINT: create a format to easily collect useful information).
• Quality assessment of included studies (HINT: learn how to properly use a valid tool to evaluate the quality and/or risk of bias of selected research works).
• Writing the review report (HINT: get familiar with the PRISMA statement and improve your critical thinking skills).

In every high-quality review, all essential steps are performed by at least two authors independently and critically discussed until consensus is reached, and this often takes time, even with the best team coordination. Moreover, there are cases in which the scientific literature in the topic area of your interest is vast, heterogeneous and complex to analyze (let's think about a mainstream subject, for example). However, by the time you gather sufficient methodological experience, you will be able to streamline your workflow and shorten your timeline.

EDIT: If you are not alone but you can rely on a team of skilled collaborators, and if you don't have to perform any quantitative/meta-analytical synthesis, you can actually save a substantial amount of time.

Finally, consider that it generally takes a minimum of 1 or 2 months to publish your results: ensure the best research standards and, when possible, use pre-submission inquiries to guess the editors' actual interest in your work in order to choose the right scientific journal.

I hope these few hints can give you some help: best wishes for your research!

References Article Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic ...

Article Analysis of the time and workers needed to conduct systemati...

Thanks a lot Amitabh and Michele for providing valuable informations.