Reviewing the literature

Describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions.

This manual guides authors who wish to conduct systematic and scoping reviews following JBI methodologies.

Guides the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews of intervention effectiveness for social science topics.

The official guide that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining systematic reviews of qualitative evidence for Cochrane and Campbell reviews.

The latest guidelines for the planning and conduct of CEE Evidence Syntheses in environmental management.

This tool is designed to provide guidance and supporting material to reviewers on methods for the conduct and reporting of knowledge synthesis.

PRISMA is an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

PRISMA-P was published in 2015 aiming to facilitate the development and reporting of systematic review protocols.

The PRISMA extension for scoping reviews was published in 2018. The checklist contains 20 essential reporting items and 2 optional items to include when completing a scoping review.

ROSES is a collaborative initiative with the aim of improving the standards of reporting in evidence syntheses.

Search frameworks help structure searches for reviews and are one of the first steps in developing the search strategy.

Known articles (or seed papers) that are relevant to the review topic are a useful way of finding additional keywords.

Subject headings are important to include in a search strategy for a review to make sure it is a comprehensive search, and they can also identify additional key words.

Search terms need to be combined correctly to give relevant and comprehensive results, and advanced search operators will also be useful.

When the search strategy has been developed, it needs to be tested on a key database to ensure it works.

The search strategy should be evaluated before conducting the final search to make sure it is comprehensive and gives relevant results.

Each database uses different subject headings, field codes and advanced operators. These will need to be altered in the search strategy for it to work correctly in each database.

It is increasingly common to include grey literature in reviews, but it can be challenging to find.

When the screening of the results has been completed, and the included articles are selected, their references and newer articles that cite them need to be identified to determine if they meet the inclusion criteria.

The search needs to be described in your review to ensure it is replicable and it makes up the beginning of the flow chart that documents the search and screening process.

There are many types of reviews, such as systematic, scoping and integrative, and choosing the right one to meet the learning needs of your students or your own research question can be challenging.