Writing a systematic literature review
Young researcher's guide to a systematic majumder | apr 29, 2015 | 162,280 types of articles: a guide for young ish on your is a systematic review? Systematic review is a highly rigorous review of existing literature that addresses a clearly formulated question. The review systematically searches, identifies, selects, appraises, and synthesizes research evidence relevant to the question using methodology that is explicit, reproducible, and leads to minimum bias. Systematic reviews are absolutely crucial in the field of evidence-based medicine, but are also highly valued in other fields. Systematic review is more exhaustive than a literature review as it includes both published and unpublished literature, often called grey literature. Grey literature is a significant part of a systematic review and adds value to the review. This is because grey literature is often more current than published literature and is likely to have less publication bias. Grey literature includes unpublished studies, reports, dissertations, conference papers and abstracts, governmental research, and ongoing clinical ting a systematic review is a complex process. This article aims to guide you on the different kinds of systematic review, the standard procedures to be followed, and the best approach to conducting and writing a systematic of systematic ative: in this type of systematic review, the results of relevant studies are summarized but not statistically tative: this type of systematic review uses statistical methods to combine the results of two or more -analysis: a meta-analysis uses statistical methods to integrate estimates of effect from relevant studies that are independent but similar and summarize good systematic review begins with a protocol.
Conducting a systematic literature review
According to the national institutes of health (nih), a protocol serves as a road-map for your review and specifies the objectives, methods, and outcomes of primary interest of the systematic review. Most journals expect authors of systematic reviews to use the prisma statement or similar other guidelines to write their prisma statement:Anybody writing a systematic literature review should be familiar with the prisma statement. The prisma statement is a document that consists of a 27-item checklist and a flow diagram and aims to guide authors on how to develop a systematic review protocol and what to include when writing the review. Protocol ideally includes the following:Databases to be searched and additional sources (particularly for grey literature). To be used in the search applied to the y of data to be ering systematic review protocols:Once you have written your protocol, it is advisable to register it. Registering your protocol is a good way to announce that you are working on a review, so that others do not start working on available protocol registries for systematic reviews are:Campbell collaboration: specific to systematic reviews of social ne collaboration: specific to systematic reviews of health care ro : an open registry for all systematic registries also provide a searchable database of registered reviews. Before starting a systematic review, you should search these databases for any registered reviews on the topic of your choice. This will ensure that you are not duplicating is the best approach to conducting a systematic review? Update the review as is helpful to follow this process and make notes at each stage.
This will make it easier for you to write the review is a systematic review article structured? It typically includes a title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and : the title should accurately reflect the topic under review. Typically, the words “a systematic review” are a part of the title to make the nature of the study ct: a systematic review usually has a structured abstract, with a short paragraph devoted to each of the following: background, methods, results, and uction: the introduction summarizes the topic and explains why the systematic review was conducted. There might have been gaps in the existing knowledge or a disagreement in the literature that necessitated a review. The introduction should also state the purpose and aims of the s: the methods section is the most crucial part of a systematic review article. You can begin by describing the search results, and then move on to the study range and characteristics, study quality, and finally discuss the effect of the intervention on the sion: the discussion should summarize the main findings from the review and then move on to discuss the limitations of the study and the reliability of the results. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the review should be discussed, and implications for current practice nces: the references section of a systematic review article usually contains an extensive number of references. You can consider using reference management software to help you tackle the references might also be interested in reading the folloowing related articles:Which is easier to publish - an original research article or a review article? Alternatively, you can also a question on our q&a forum if you are facing a problem and need expert publication ish on your : systematic reviewreview this article?
H2>a young researcher's guide to a systematic review
what is a systematic review? P style="text-align: justify;">a systematic review is a highly rigorous review of existing literature that addresses a clearly formulated question. P style="text-align: justify;">a systematic review is more exhaustive than a literature review as it includes both published and unpublished literature, often called grey literature. Grey literature includes unpublished studies, reports, dissertations, conference papers and abstracts, governmental research, and ongoing clinical trials. P style="text-align: justify;">conducting a systematic review is a complex process. This article aims to guide you on the different kinds of systematic review, the standard procedures to be followed, and the best approach to conducting and writing a systematic review. P style="text-align: justify;">types of systematic reviews
. Ul>P style="text-align: justify;">writing a protocol
. Most journals expect authors of systematic reviews to use the prisma statement or similar other guidelines to write their protocol. Ul>the registries also provide a searchable database of registered reviews. P style="text-align: justify;">what is the best approach to conducting a systematic review?
Strong>update the review as needed
. P style="text-align: justify;">how is a systematic review article structured? P style="text-align: justify;">title: the title should accurately reflect the topic under review. Typically, the words “a systematic review” are a part of the title to make the nature of the study clear. P style="text-align: justify;">abstract: a systematic review usually has a structured abstract, with a short paragraph devoted to each of the following: background, methods, results, and conclusion. P style="text-align: justify;">introduction: the introduction summarizes the topic and explains why the systematic review was conducted. P style="text-align: justify;">methods: the methods section is the most crucial part of a systematic review article. P style="text-align: justify;">discussion: the discussion should summarize the main findings from the review and then move on to discuss the limitations of the study and the reliability of the results. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the review should be discussed, and implications for current practice suggested.P style="text-align: justify;">references: the references section of a systematic review article usually contains an extensive number of references. Performance of a firm in the absence of professional auditor for professional i submit again to journal after first rejection with reviewers' comments? Of scientific literature: a report from the 2017 peer review congresstips for effective literature searching and keeping up with new publicationsquality of reporting in scientific publications: a report from the 2017 peer review popular in this to write an effective title and abstract and choose appropriate keywords. Article types that journals publish: a guide for early career is the difference between a research paper and a review paper? Pmcid: pmc539417five steps to conducting a systematic reviewkhalid s khan, mb msc, regina kunz, md msc,1 jos kleijnen, md phd,2 and gerd antes, phd3education resource centre, birmingham women's hospital, birmingham b15 2tg, uk1 german cochrane centre, freiburg and department of nephrology, charité, berlin, germany2 centre for reviews and dissemination, york, uk3 german cochrane centre, freiburg, germany correspondence to: khalid s khan e-mail:-mahb@author information ► copyright and license information ►copyright © 2003, the royal society of medicinethis article has been cited by other articles in atic reviews and meta-analyses are a key element of care, yet they remain in some ways mysterious. Review earns the adjective systematic if it is based on a ated question, identifies relevant studies, appraises their quality izes the evidence by use of explicit methodology. Reviews should never be any other this paper we provide a step-by-step explanation—there are steps—of the methods behind reviewing, and the quality nt in each step (box 1). For purposes of illustration we use a concerning the safety of public water fluoridation, but we ize that our subject is review methodology, not e: safety of public water fluoridationyou are a public health professional in a locality that has public dation. The n various components of the question and the structure of the are shown in figure paper focuses only on the question of safety related to es described 1structured questions for systematic reviews and relations on components in a comparative studybox 1 the steps in a systematic reviewstep 1: framing questions for a reviewthe problems to be addressed by the review should be specified in the clear, unambiguous and structured questions before beginning the .
Once the review questions have been set, modifications to the be allowed only if alternative ways of defining the populations,Interventions, outcomes or study designs become apparentstep 2: identifying relevant workthe search for studies should be extensive. Multiple resources (erized and printed) should be searched without language study selection criteria should flow directly from the review be specified a priori. Reasons for inclusion and exclusion recordedstep 3: assessing the quality of studiesstudy quality assessment is relevant to every step of a review. With ound, systematic reviews on safety have to include evidence from a range of 2: identifying relevant publicationsto capture as many relevant citations as possible, a wide range of medical,Environmental and scientific databases were searched to identify s of the effects of water fluoridation. Thus, systematic reviews assessing the safety of entions have to include evidence from a broader range of study eration of the type and amount of research likely to be available led ion of comparative studies of any design. Thus ce summarized in this review is likely to be as good as it will get foreseeable future. The interpretation of the results may lly limited because of the low quality of studies, but the findings cancer outcomes are supported by the moderate-quality tionafter having spent some time reading and understanding the review, you sed by the sheer amount of published work relevant to the question . From the review you also discovered fluorosis (mottled teeth) was related to concentration of the interest groups raise the issue of safety again, you will be able e that there is no evidence to link cancer with dation; however, you will have to come clean about the risk of sis, which appears to be dose dependent, and you may want to measure de concentration in the water supply and share this information with st ability to quantify the safety concerns of your population through , albeit from studies of moderate to low quality, allows your ity, the politicians and the public to consider the balance cial and harmful effects of water fluoridation. Whatever the opinions on this matter, you are able to reassure s that there is no evidence that fluoridation of drinking ses the risk of sionwith increasing focus on generating guidance and recommendations ce through systematic reviews, healthcare professionals need tand the principles of preparing such reviews.