Maintaining Quality Through Content Review
Our Quality review framework
We pride ourselves on our stringent quality standards, as seen in achieving quality on Physiopedia, and hold ourselves accountable when completing quality checks and edits on our pages. We follow specific standards to achieve high-quality and maintain consistency and we expect you, as a volunteer Editor, to know what they are and edit pages in a way that complies with these standards.
When reviewing our content, we recommend that you follow our comprehensive five-stage framework that ensures thorough evaluation of all aspects of page quality. Each stage builds upon the previous one, creating a systematic approach to content improvement:
- AI-Assisted Initial Review - Perform an AI analysis using Claude, that will help to identify areas for improvement.
- Expert Content Review - Complete a human review, applying expertise with evaluation of clinical accuracy and completeness of a page.
- Literature Verification - Conduct a systematic search, with the role of ensuring evidence is current, comprehensive and from the most recent peer reviewed research.
- Formatting and Presentation - Once you are happy with the written content, you can shift your focus towards the structure and layout to maximise readability optimisation
- Media and Link Enhancement - Finally, to diversify accessibility to information, we recommended adding visual content and connectivity improvement, such as images and videos where possible to our content.
This framework ensures that no aspect of quality is overlooked while maintaining efficiency in the review process and can help guide you in your checks for quality before sharing your edits with the wider team. Read our page on content review, to further understand each stage and other aspects of our content review process.
To make edits easy and to ensure all aspects of quality are reviewed on our pages we recommend use a specifically designed quality checklist on every page you review.
Using Evidence Effectively
Evidence is the foundation of persuasive writing and critical thinking. When you make a claim, you need to support it with credible information that convinces your audience.
As part of our quality promise, we are in the process of reviewing our existing pages and ensuring any new pages contain content that is backed by peer-reviewed trusted research from credible journals. Our goal is for Physiopedia content to be consistently underpinned by strong, reliable evidence with a clear level of evidence. As a result we avoid using secondary information from websites or journals such as StatPearls or Cureus.
To protect Physiopedia's credibility as a trusted educational resource, we ask that edits focus on higher-quality evidence, including:
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- RCTs (Randomised Controlled Trials)
- Clinical guidelines and consensus statements (WHO, NICE, professional bodies)
- Well-established, high-impact rehabilitation and medical journals
You may base your evidence on research shared in the Slack channels or updated studies that meet these criteria.
How to Find Good Literature
Start with specialised databases designed for healthcare research. PubMed/MEDLINE is your primary resource for biomedical literature, while the Cochrane Library specialises in systematic reviews. PEDro (Physiotherapy Evidence Database) focuses specifically on physiotherapy trials and reviews with quality ratings already applied.
Use advanced search strategies to narrow your results. Combine relevant keywords with filters for publication type (systematic review, RCT, clinical guideline), publication date (usually within the last 5 years), and full-text availability. For example, searching "shoulder impingement AND exercise therapy" with filters for systematic reviews published since 2019 will yield more targeted, high-quality results.
Check the journal's reputation before relying on a study. High-impact rehabilitation journals include Physical Therapy, Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, Manual Therapy, and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. If you're unsure about a journal's credibility, check if it's indexed in PubMed or has an impact factor listed in Journal Citation Reports.
Look for recent guidelines from authoritative bodies. Organisations like NICE, WHO, the American Physical Therapy Association, and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy regularly publish evidence-based clinical practice guidelines that synthesise the best available research.
Remember to check reference lists of high-quality papers you find—they often lead you to other relevant, credible sources you might have missed in your initial search. If you are unable to find a paper, or unable to access the full text, you can post in Slack to check whether anyone has access to it.
Please review our page on how to perform a simple literature search, to refresh your memory on search strategies.
Integrating Evidence Smoothly
Avoid just dropping citations into your writing. Introduce each piece of evidence with context, explain what it means, and connect it back to your main point. For example: "A 2024 systematic review found that exercise therapy significantly reduced chronic low back pain (pooled effect size = 0.68), supporting its use as a first-line intervention." We recommend that you embed your evidence within the main body of text where you are discussing a point, instead of having a section on evidence following it.
Common Research Pitfalls
Avoid relying on single studies, outdated research, or sources from predatory journals. Predatory journals are fake or low-quality academic publications that often charge authors fees to publish while skipping genuine peer review. They pollute the scientific record with unvetted research, mimic legitimate journals to appear credible, and aggressively target researchers under pressure to publish. Researchers can use resources like Beall's List or the DOAJ to help avoid them.
Another common pitfall or editing bias is cherry-picking evidence that only supports your view while ignoring contradictory findings from higher-quality sources. Always represent the full scope of what the evidence shows, including limitations.
Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism occurs when you present someone else's words, ideas, or work as your own without proper attribution. As an editor, you have both an ethical obligation and a professional responsibility to identify and prevent plagiarism in the materials you produce and edit. To avoid plagiarism in your own work and help other editors avoid it in theirs, always ensure that direct quotations are clearly marked with quotation marks and cited, that paraphrased content is substantially reworded and attributed to the original source, and that any borrowed ideas or information, even when expressed in your own words, are properly credited. When in doubt, attribute the source.
Please read our page on academic integrity, to familiarise yourself with what is expected of you and your writing.