This page provides introductory information and links to resources about scoping and systematic reviews.Was this guide helpful? Please leave quick, anonymous feedback for this guide by clicking on this link. To report a broken link, an error, or a page malfunction please click the Page Feedback link at the bottom of the page. Is a Systematic or Scoping Review Right for Your Research Goals?Systematic and scoping reviews are resource-intensive research projects - they require a great deal of time and teamwork to be effective. They were traditionally done by researchers in medicine and the sciences as a way to analyze large numbers of related studies, but have recently grown in popularity in other academic areas of study. You should make certain you and your team are prepared for all the work involved in these kinds of reviews.What is a Systematic Review?Systematic reviews are done in teams, and usually take 18-24 months to complete.Systematic reviews ask a specific research question and answer it by summarizing evidence that meets a set of pre-specified criteria. A review team searches for studies to answer the question using a highly specific search strategy and following a strict protocol. The retrieved studies are then screened by a research team of at least 2 people using a set of criteria. The reviewers then extract the relevant information from the articles and assess their quality. Finally, the review team synthesizes the extracted information and presents the results. What is a Scoping Review?Scoping reviews are done in teams, and usually take 9-12 months to complete.Because systematic reviews are so research intensive, some researchers conduct a scoping review first to find out more about the body of evidence in a particular topic area, and determine if a systematic review is warranted.Scoping reviews usually ask a broad question, to capture as many resources as possible in a subject area. Like systematic reviews, scoping reviews use an intensive search strategy and follow a protocol for locating and including materials. Once the information is gathered and selected, it is organized to find trends and gaps. Information for the above taken from Covidence.org: The Difference Between a Systematic Review & Scoping Review, and Western Libraries: Knowledge Synthesis: Systematic & Scoping Reviews If these types of projects sound too intensive for the amount of time you have or the size of your team, visit the Writing Services support page to see examples of other types of written works. If this is the work you want, visit the following resources for more information on conducting systematic and scoping reviews:JBI: Systematic ReviewsPRISMA Reporting Guidelines for Systematic ReviewsJBI: Scoping Reviews Getting StartedPlease visit Laurier Library's Systematic Reviews page for resources to help you get started with your scoping or systematic review.You are always welcome to contact me if you are uncertain how to proceed.Remember:Check to see if anyone else has already started a similar research project. Journals, newsletters, or platforms like Open Science Framework (OSF) can help you discover if someone else has already started the work you want to do. Platforms like OSF are also a good way of signaling your intent to work on a particular research question.Your team must decide on the focus of your research and write a guiding protocol to help ensure a uniform search is conducted by all members of the team tasked with retrieving articles and studies. This includes developing a set of keywords, subject terms, and search strings to be used by all team members who search the databases.When doing a systematic or scoping review, your ultimate goal is to create a reproducible search; this means keeping complete notes about how each search is run in each separate database. You should aim to create a single search string for each database (basically keeping track of your smaller search strings and combining them into one long string which will bring back a refined result). Also keep in mind, you cannot run a scoping or systematic review in Omni, Laurier Library's academic research tool, only in individual databases. Organizing and Screening Your Search ResultsCovidence is a web-based software platform that streamlines the production of systematic and scoping reviews. Laurier provides access to it for any student or faculty member.Covidence Knowledge BaseCovidence Academy