Systematic and complex literature reviews

Reviewing the search results

Systematic reviews should have two or more independent reviewers for this stage. Although systematic literature reviews and scoping reviews can be undertaken predominantly by one researcher, good quality systematic literature reviews should also have two independent reviewers following the inclusion and exclusion criteria previously defined in the protocol, in order to reduce the risk of bias.

Screening is a two stage process. The first stage is the title and abstract screening using the inclusion criteria. The full text is then located for the included articles. This is used for the second stage of screening, where the full text is screened against the criteria.

The PRISMA workflow is often used in systematic types of review to demonstrate how many publications were identified and screened, how many were excluded at the first stage of screening (title/abstract) and how many were excluded at the next level of screening (full-text screening). Tools such EndNote may be used to assist with managing references from the search and can be aligned to the PRISMA workflow. JBI Sumari can be used to manage the screening process.

Critical Appraisal

The following tools may assist with the critical appraisal of studies that make it through full text screening.

Further reading