Structures, Processes, and Success Factors of sustainable Virtual Communities of Practice in Pandemics & Epidemics: A Scoping Review

Objective: The objective of this scoping review is to identify and synthesize existing frameworks, guidelines, and methodological approaches for Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs). A specific focus is on the structures, processes, and success factors that enable meaningful and sustainable contributions in pandemic and epidemic contexts. Introduction: Virtual Communities of Practice have been widely used to support knowledge exchange, collaboration, and learning across professional domains, and their relevance has become particularly evident during pandemics and epidemics. While VCoPs played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence suggests that many struggle with sustainability, governance, and long-term impact, especially under prolonged crisis conditions. To date, guidance tailored to virtual, interdisciplinary, and high-pressure public health emergency contexts remains fragmented and limited. Inclusion criteria: The eligibility criteria follow the PCC framework (Population, Concept, and Context) as recommended by the Joanna Briggs Institute (Pollock et al., 2023). Population comprises professionals, organizations, or networks working in public health, outbreak analytics, epidemic intelligence, or comparable professional and organizational settings. The concept is Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs), including their development, management, governance, sustainability, accessibility, equity, and evaluation or impact, as described in guidelines, frameworks, methodological papers, conceptual studies, case studies, reviews, and reports. The context includes relevant professional or organizational environments, irrespective of year or study design. Literature focusing on non-virtual Communities of Practice, solely on physicians or nursing staff, non-communicable diseases, direct patient care, or on contexts where transferability cannot be assessed are excluded. Methods: Data sources to be searched include MEDLINE (via Ovid), Embase (via Ovid), Scopus, and Web of Science for peer-reviewed literature, complemented by grey literature searches in BASE and search engines via Google, and Google Scholar, as well as backward and forward citation searching. No restriction on year or study design. As the review is currently in the preparation stage, the search has not yet been conducted. The planned Scoping review will be following the JBI methodology for scoping reviews (Peters et al, 2020), the recommendations for extraction of results in scoping reviews and will be reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. Study selection will involve deduplication in Rayyan and pick or perish, followed by two-stage screening (title/abstract and full text) conducted independently by four reviewers, with conflicts resolved by a fifth reviewer and inter-rater agreement assessed using Cohen’s kappa. Data extraction will follow a staged approach (training, reliability verification, and final extraction), using standardized forms in Microsoft forms, with selective double extraction for complex cases. Results will be presented narratively, supported by summary tables mapping findings, categories, and confidence ratings. No notable methodological deviations have occurred, as the review remains in the protocol phase.