Questions Are Part of the Journey: Contact, Academic Support & Systematic Review FAQ
Whether you’re exploring, enrolling, or progressing through the Meta-Journey, we’re here to guide you, clearly and responsibly.
Contact & Academic Support
MetaSyn is guided, not automated. You’ll reach thoughtful people who understand evidence synthesis and can answer your questions with precision.
General Enquiries
Questions about programs, fit, roadmap, and enrollment options? We’ll help you understand whether MetaSyn is the right next step.
Academic & Methodological
Questions about systematic review frameworks, PRISMA 2020, PRISMA-P protocol design, PROSPERO and OSF registration, GRADE certainty assessment, or how MetaSyn aligns with Cochrane and Campbell methodology standards.
Technical Access
Issues with course access, platform navigation, or account management. We’ll resolve technical friction quickly.
Institutional & Enterprise
Schools, research centers, organizations, and teams interested in group access, licensing, or custom training arrangements.
Send us a message
We respect your privacy. Your information is never shared or sold. Privacy Policy
Response Window: General inquiries within 3 business days (Mon–Fri, global time zones considered). Technical access issues prioritized same business day. For founding cohort members, founder-personal feedback on protocols within 3 business days.
Want to know who you’re contacting? Read about Dr. Esmaeel Saeedy Robat, founder, lead faculty, and the person who personally responds to academic and methodological inquiries during the founding cohort window.
How We Support You
Clear boundaries make for the best relationships. Here’s what you can expect and what you won’t.
✓ Support Includes
- Course access and platform navigation
- Questions about methodology and frameworks (PRISMA, PROSPERO, GRADE)
- Clarification on course content and capstone deliverables
- Enrollment, founding-cohort, and payment inquiries
- Institutional partnership and Faculty Fellowship discussions
- Technical troubleshooting and account access
× What It Doesn’t Replace
- We don’t do the work for you, learning happens through engagement
- We don’t provide statistical consulting for your university projects
- We don’t replace formal academic supervision or mentorship
- Personal reviews of your synthesis and projects aren’t included
- Custom research design isn’t included in standard courses
→ How Guidance Evolves
As you progress through the Meta-Journey, your questions deepen. Early courses focus on foundations. Later courses expect independent application. We guide the journey, but you drive the rigor.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions researchers ask before joining MetaSyn, answered clearly and without marketing language.
About the Academy
No. MetaSyn is field-agnostic by design. Researchers and practitioners join from academic research, clinical medicine, public health, applied linguistics, education, pharmaceutical industry, HEOR and market access, policy and government, environmental science, and business strategy. The methodology, PRISMA-aligned, Cochrane-grounded, GRADE-compatible, is universal. What changes is your discipline, your questions, and your decisions. If you make decisions that depend on evidence, MetaSyn is built for you.
MetaSyn teaches decision infrastructure, the methodological skills that turn scattered evidence into defensible conclusions. The 12-course Meta-Journey builds six core competencies: Question framing. Structure research questions across PICO, PECO, SPIDER, ECLIPSE, PCC, and PIRT frameworks Protocol design. Build PRISMA-P-aligned, PROSPERO/OSF-registered protocols for any review type Evidence synthesis. Integrate findings across studies through narrative or quantitative synthesis (including network and IPD meta-analysis) Interpretation under uncertainty. Apply GRADE-rated certainty assessment when perfect evidence is impossible Evidence communication. Present findings with PRISMA 2020-compliant reporting for journals, guidelines, and HTA bodies Methodological rigor. Understand the foundations so you can apply them across any context, any field MetaSyn is method-first, field-agnostic, and built for researchers who refuse to guess.
No. MetaSyn is field-agnostic. You learn the same methodology whether you’re conducting a pharmaceutical evidence review, a climate policy synthesis, or a technology market analysis. What changes is your context and questions, not the rigor you apply. You’ll apply every lesson to YOUR field, YOUR questions, YOUR decisions.
Courses & Progression
No prior systematic review or meta-analysis experience is required. Course 1: The Launchpad is designed for researchers entering systematic review work for the first time. No coding, no statistical programming, no specialized software experience needed. We assume you’re intelligent and curious, not that you already know research methodology. That said, this is rigorous training. Course 1 alone produces a registered, PRISMA-P aligned protocol on your real research project. If you’re comfortable with structured thinking and willing to engage deeply with complex ideas, you’re ready.
Yes. Each course is designed to be valuable on its own, and Course 1 alone gives you a registered systematic review protocol on your own research project. The full Meta Journey is 12 courses across four progressive phases: Phase I – Foundation (Courses 1–3): Protocol design, search strategy, screening Phase II – Methodology (Courses 4-7): Critical appraisal, data extraction, quantitative synthesis, heterogeneity Phase III -Summit (Courses 8–10): Diverse review types, GRADE, publication and impact Phase IV – New Frontiers (Courses 11–12): HEOR/market access reviews, advanced meta-analysis (network, IPD, second-order) Many learners start with Course 1, then decide based on their goals and timing.
Course 1 launches with the academy’s English-speaking edition in 2026. Subsequent courses follow a deliberate cohort cadence, one course at a time, released over 6–7 weeks each, mirroring the natural pace of real systematic review work. This isn’t drip content for its own sake. It’s pacing built around how researchers actually develop methodological judgment. When you enroll in Course 1, you receive immediate full access. Founding-cohort members also receive priority pre-registration for Courses 2 and beyond, with locked-in early-bird pricing
Time, Access & Learning
Course 1: The Launchpad is designed for 3–6 weeks of engagement, depending on your topic complexity and pace. Approximately 5–6 hours of video across 62 lessons in 5 stations, plus 8–15 hours of guided protocol work on your own real research project. Includes 5 Smart HTML interactive modules, 5 audio recaps, station debriefs, and a final examination. You control your pace. If you need more time, take it. The rigor stays the same.
Yes. You learn on your schedule. Courses are asynchronous, no live sessions, no fixed deadlines. You access materials, work through exercises, and progress as your life and work allow. However, we recommend working through each course’s modules in order. They build on each other.
Yes. Once you’re enrolled, you have permanent access to all course materials. Come back as often as you need, for refreshers, for clarification, or to revisit concepts months later. Evidence synthesis is complex. Revisiting lessons is how you deepen understanding.
Methodology & Rigor
Yes. MetaSyn curriculum aligns with the international standards that govern modern evidence synthesis: PRISMA 2020 + PRISMA-P + PRISMA-S. Reporting (PRISMA 2020, all 27 items), protocol design (PRISMA-P, all 17 items), and search strategy reporting (PRISMA-S) are taught in dedicated lessons. PROSPERO and OSF. Course 1 walks PROSPERO field-by-field across 12 dedicated lessons, plus OSF as the open science alternative. Cochrane Handbook methodology. Systematic review methods draw from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Campbell Collaboration and JBI methodologies. Covered for social interventions and qualitative/mixed-methods reviews respectively. GRADE. Certainty assessment across five domains (risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision, publication bias).Graduates are ready to publish in peer-reviewed journals, register reviews on PROSPERO/OSF, and meet funder requirements at NIH, ERC, NSF, Wellcome, and beyond.
Yes, and this is foundational, not decorative. MetaSyn’s curriculum is built by a published meta-analyst whose work appears in Nature Human Behaviour (forthcoming, 2026), Review of Educational Research (Web of Science Highly Cited Paper), and Educational Psychology Review (with Prof. Richard Ryan, founder of Self Determination Theory). Our approach combines: Peer-reviewed research on systematic review methodology and evidence synthesis Direct authorship of meta-analyses across multiple disciplines (applied linguistics, education, health psychology, public health) Methodological updates as international standards evolve (PRISMA, Cochrane, GRADE, Campbell, JBI) Lessons from 8,000+ students taught online over the past decade, with continuous curriculum refinement We don’t just teach what experts say works. We teach the methods we ourselves practice and publish.
MetaSyn embraces AI tools , including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and validated screening platforms (Rayyan, ASReview) as augmentation, not substitution. We teach AI literacy as a required competency for modern evidence synthesis, because ignoring AI would make the methodology obsolete and the academy itself replaceable. Our principles: Generate, Verify, Document. Every AI output is reviewed by a human before it touches your protocol. The verification step is non-negotiable. Disclose AI use. You’ll know where and how AI supports the curriculum, with PRISMA-AI transparency guidance. Maintain human judgment at every methodological checkpoint. Eligibility decisions, risk-of-bias assessment, GRADE certainty, and synthesis interpretation remain human responsibilities. Keep data private. Your synthesis work is never used for AI training; analytics tools (Google Analytics 4) operate in aggregate mode only. Evidence synthesis requires judgment and accountability. AI can support the work, but it cannot replace the methodologist.
Methodology & Rigor
Yes, and this is foundational, not decorative. MetaSyn’s curriculum is built by a published meta-analyst whose work appears in Nature Human Behaviour ( 2026), Review of Educational Research (Web of Science Highly Cited Paper), and Educational Psychology Review (with Prof. Richard Ryan, founder of Self Determination Theory). Our approach combines: Peer-reviewed research on systematic review methodology and evidence synthesis Direct authorship of meta-analyses across multiple disciplines (applied linguistics, education, health psychology, public health) Methodological updates as international standards evolve (PRISMA, Cochrane, GRADE, Campbell, JBI) Lessons from 8,000+ students taught online over the past decade, with continuous curriculum refinement We don’t just teach what experts say works. We teach the methods we ourselves practice and publish.
Yes. MetaSyn curriculum aligns with the international standards that govern modern evidence synthesis: PRISMA 2020 + PRISMA-P + PRISMA-S. Reporting (PRISMA 2020, all 27 items), protocol design (PRISMA-P, all 17 items), and search strategy reporting (PRISMA-S) are taught in dedicated lessons. PROSPERO and OSF. Course 1 walks PROSPERO field-by-field across 12 dedicated lessons, plus OSF as the open science alternative. Cochrane Handbook methodology. Systematic review methods draw from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Campbell Collaboration and JBI methodologies. Covered for social interventions and qualitative/mixed-methods reviews respectively. GRADE. Certainty assessment across five domains (risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision, publication bias).Graduates are ready to publish in peer-reviewed journals, register reviews on PROSPERO/OSF, and meet funder requirements at NIH, ERC, NSF, Wellcome, and beyond.
MetaSyn embraces AI tools , including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and validated screening platforms (Rayyan, ASReview) as augmentation, not substitution. We teach AI literacy as a required competency for modern evidence synthesis, because ignoring AI would make the methodology obsolete and the academy itself replaceable. Our principles: Generate, Verify, Document. Every AI output is reviewed by a human before it touches your protocol. The verification step is non-negotiable. Disclose AI use. You’ll know where and how AI supports the curriculum, with PRISMA-AI transparency guidance. Maintain human judgment at every methodological checkpoint. Eligibility decisions, risk-of-bias assessment, GRADE certainty, and synthesis interpretation remain human responsibilities. Keep data private. Your synthesis work is never used for AI training; analytics tools (Google Analytics 4) operate in aggregate mode only. Evidence synthesis requires judgment and accountability. AI can support the work, but it cannot replace the methodologist.
Time, Access & Learning
Course 1: The Launchpad is designed for 3–6 weeks of engagement, depending on your topic complexity and pace. Approximately 5–6 hours of video across 62 lessons in 5 stations, plus 8–15 hours of guided protocol work on your own real research project. Includes 5 Smart HTML interactive modules, 5 audio recaps, station debriefs, and a final examination. You control your pace. If you need more time, take it. The rigor stays the same.
Yes. You learn on your schedule. Courses are asynchronous, no live sessions, no fixed deadlines. You access materials, work through exercises, and progress as your life and work allow.
However, we recommend working through each course’s modules in order. They build on each other.
Yes. Once you’re enrolled, you have permanent access to all course materials. Come back as often as you need, for refreshers, for clarification, or to revisit concepts months later.
Evidence synthesis is complex. Revisiting lessons is how you deepen understanding.
Methodology Concepts
A systematic review is a structured, transparent, reproducible synthesis of all available evidence on a specific research question, using pre-registered methods to find, appraise, and integrate studies. A meta-analysis is a quantitative method within a systematic review that statistically combines numerical results from multiple studies to produce a pooled effect estimate. Every meta-analysis sits inside a systematic review, but not every systematic review includes a meta-analysis (some have too few studies, too much heterogeneity, or qualitative data that can’t be pooled). MetaSyn teaches both. Course 1 builds the systematic review protocol foundation; Course 6 teaches quantitative meta-analysis with modern tools (R, Stata, JASP); Course 12 teaches advanced methods (network meta-analysis, IPD meta-analysis, second-order meta-analysis).
Strongly recommended, and increasingly required. PROSPERO (the international prospective register for systematic reviews in health and care) registration is the modern standard for transparency and a defense against accusations of post-hoc method changes. Major journals (BMJ, Cochrane Database, JAMA, Nature, The Lancet group) increasingly require it. Funders increasingly expect it. Methodological supervisors expect it. PROSPERO registration is free and takes 1–2 weeks for approval. For non-health domains, the Open Science Framework (OSF) provides equivalent registration. Course 1 walks both PROSPERO (across 12 field-by-field lessons) and OSF as alternatives, and your Course 1 capstone is a registered protocol on one of these systems.
A complete systematic review typically takes 6–18 months from question to publication, depending on scope, team size, and complexity. Approximate breakdown: protocol development and registration (4–8 weeks), comprehensive search (2–4 weeks), screening (4–12 weeks depending on yield), full-text review and data extraction (4–8 weeks), risk-of-bias assessment (2–4 weeks), synthesis and meta-analysis (4–8 weeks), manuscript preparation and revision (8–16 weeks). MetaSyn Course 1 alone, protocol design through PROSPERO registration, typically takes founding-cohort members 2–3 weeks of part-time engagement. Subsequent courses align roughly with subsequent phases of a real systematic review. The Meta Journey is built to mirror the natural pace of rigorous synthesis work.
Yes – with disciplined verification. AI tools have become genuinely useful for several systematic review tasks: title/abstract screening (validated platforms like Rayyan and ASReview), search strategy translation across databases, drafting structured protocol sections, organizing extracted data, and plain-language summaries. They are not yet reliable for: final eligibility decisions, risk-of-bias assessment, GRADE certainty judgments, or interpretive synthesis, these require human methodological judgment. MetaSyn’s approach is “Generate, Verify, Document”: every AI output is reviewed by a human before it touches your protocol, and every use is documented for transparency.
PRISMA-AI guidance (the emerging extension for AI-assisted systematic reviews) is woven throughout the curriculum. AI literacy is a required methodological competency at MetaSyn, ignoring AI tools would leave researchers behind, and uncritical use would compromise rigor.
PRISMA is a family of reporting guidelines for systematic reviews. The three most relevant to most reviewers: PRISMA 2020. The main reporting guideline for completed systematic reviews. 27 items + flow diagram. Used when you write up your final manuscript. PRISMA-P (2015). The reporting guideline for systematic review protocols. 17 items. Used when you write your protocol for PROSPERO or OSF registration. Course 1 walks all 17 items in dedicated lessons. PRISMA-S (2021). The reporting guideline specifically for the search component of systematic reviews. Used to ensure your search strategy is reproducible and peer-review-grade. Course 2 covers PRISMA-S in depth. Other PRISMA extensions exist for specific review types (PRISMA-ScR for scoping reviews, PRISMA-NMA for network meta-analyses, PRISMA-IPD for individual participant data, PRISMA-DTA for diagnostic test accuracy, and others). MetaSyn introduces the relevant extension whenever its review type appears in the curriculum.
Certification & Outcomes
The SynClarity Seal of Methodological Rigor is MetaSyn’s per-course credential certifying disciplined reasoning, transparent decisions, and defensible synthesis. Each course awards two certificates: a standard course completion certificate, plus the SynClarity Seal certificate awarded only when your deliverable demonstrates methodological coherence at every checkpoint. Each Seal is issued through MetaSyn’s certification system with a unique credential identifier and a public verification link, so journal editors, supervisors, and employers can independently confirm the credential. It’s not a formal degree, it’s a verifiable credential of methodological practice.
No. MetaSyn is methodology training, not a degree program. If you need a PhD, Master’s, or formal academic credential, that’s a different path. However, MetaSyn complements formal education in three ways: graduate students use it to acquire systematic review and meta-analysis skills that thesis programs often assume but don’t teach; mid-career researchers and clinicians use it to update methodological literacy as standards evolve; and practitioners in HEOR, policy, and industry use it to fill methodology gaps that traditional academic training leaves. MetaSyn certifies methodological practice, formal degrees certify completed academic programs. The two are complementary, not competing.
You demonstrate competence through real applied work on your own research project, not multiple-choice tests. Course by course, you produce: Course 1. A PRISMA-P aligned protocol document (3,000–5,000 words) registered on PROSPERO or OSF.
Course 2. A peer-review-grade search strategy across multiple databases with full documentation Course 3. A defensible included-studies set with PRISMA flow diagram and inter-rater reliability. Courses 4–10. Risk-of-bias assessments, data extractions, quantitative or narrative syntheses, GRADE-rated certainty, publication-ready manuscripts. Courses 11–12. HEOR-grade reviews and advanced meta-analyses (network, IPD, second-order) Each deliverable is reviewed for methodological rigor by Dr. Saeedy Robat personally during the founding cohort window. Founding-cohort members receive feedback within 3 business days. This is how you earn the SynClarity Seal, by doing the work, not memorizing facts.
Ready to Begin?
You’ve asked your questions. You understand what MetaSyn is and isn’t. The next step is yours and it’s simpler than you might think.