How can I efficiently update a literature review (that got outdated due to being rejected three times)? Two years ago a colleague and I conducted a full-text analysis-based systematic literature review regarding a specific topic in information systems. We’ve done it in the time span of three months. After that, we wrote a paper and submitted it to an information systems conference. Unfortunately, it was rejected. The blind review was comprehensive and we get really good advice for improving the paper. However, sequentially, at two other conferences, the blind reviews were positive, but due to the high competitiveness (&lt;30% acceptance rate) the paper has also been rejected. We’ve included the responses from the reviewers into a new version of the paper. 

Now, two years later, the literature review is out of date. A large set of relevant papers (>50) have been published since we conducted the review. However, we do not have enough time resources to update our full-text analysis. We have collected the new papers in our own literature review database. But to read each paper and to do a full-text coding is impossible, due to other projects that take place at our chair. 

Now, I’m thinking about putting the review results into the wastebin, because I do not see any opportunity to get my results published. Needless to say, that this is very unsatisfying to me. I think, a justification that the literature review has been done in 2015 in the paper, will not be accepted by future reviewers. 

So my question is:

Are there strategies to update the results of a full-text analysis without conducting a completely new analysis? For example, is there some kind of methodology which combines full-text analysis of older sources with a delta analysis or something else? Are there methods the reduce the time efforts?
I recommend that you find another co-author who is willing and able to spend the time that you cannot. An good candidate may be a supervisee (PhD student, postdoc) who needs to get more familiar with the topic anyway. A fresh view may also help to address possible problems with the paper.