Systematic Reviews: A How-To Guide

Welcome to Systematic Reviews: A How-To Guide at UVic Libraries

This site brings together resources available from UVic Libraries and provides resources and guidance for conducting a systematic review and similar evidence synthesis projects.

Click on the tabs on this page to uncover detailed lists of resources to help answer your questions.  Each tab is comprised of the best sources for finding what you need.

What is a Systematic Review?

A systematic review uses a structured and reproducible method to identify, assess and critically appraise all relevant studies in response to a specific research query. It can be either quantitative or qualitative, and will generally take a team of researchers many months to complete (Wilkinson, 2020). 

The key characteristics of a systematic review are:

• a clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies;

• an explicit, reproducible methodology;

• a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that would meet the eligibility criteria;

• an assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example through the assessment of risk of bias; and

• a systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies (Higgins & Thomas, 2019).

A systematic review is a rigorous type of evidence synthesis. Systematic reviews require more time and manpower than traditional literature reviews. While this guide focuses on systematic reviews, readers should be aware of the other types of reviews (scoping reviews, narrative reviews, etc). 

Want to learn more about other forms of evidence synthesis? Check out these articles:

1) A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies by Grant & Booth (2009)

2) Meeting the review family: exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements by Sutton, Clowes, Preston, & Booth (2019)

The Steps of a Systematic Review

Wondering how to conduct a systematic review? This explainer video from The Evidence Synthesis Academy at Brown University walks you through the basic steps.

NEW! 

Yale University's Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library Systematic Searches tutorial page

This series of tutorials cover the fundamental concepts and general procedure of searching the health science literature in a systematic manner. They will mainly focus on systematic searches required by a "systematic review". The goal of these tutorials is to ensure that your search is comprehensive, methodical, transparent and reproducible, so that your conclusions are as unbiased and closer to truth as possible. 

NEW! 

University of Saskatchewan's Library Researcher Series: So You Think You Want To Do A Systematic Review provides excellent and engaging context on what you need to know before starting a systematic review project. 

Higgins, J., & Thomas, J. (2019). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. https://training.cochrane.org/handbook/current

Wilkinson, J. (2020, August 11). Systematic review tips every librarian should know. Web of Science Group. https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/article/systematic-review-tips-every-librarian-should-know/