Systematic reviews for PhD students and research staff
"Systematic reviews aim to identify, evaluate and summarise the findings of all relevant individual studies. They adhere to a strict scientific design based on explicit, pre-specified and reproducible methods." [Centre for Reviews and Dissemination 2008, p5.]
"SLRs [systematic literature reviews] by their very definition differ from traditional literature reviews: their scope is to address a highly specific research question [e.g., 'what works' or 'what works best'] for which evidence from the literature is sought. SLRs thus do not aim to provide what traditional literature reviews do: an assessment of a state of knowledge in a problem domain and identification of weaknesses and needs for further research." [Boell and Cecez-Kecmanovic 2015]
Systematic reviews follow an explicit protocol to identify ALL the available evidence on a particular research question. They are complex, high quality and rigorous reviews, which aim to:
- Identify all relevant published and unpublished evidence on the specified review topic;
- assess the quality of studies and select for inclusion;
- synthesise the findings from all of the studies in an unbiased way, in order to present a balanced summary of the findings;
- can take 18 months or longer to complete; and
- are usually carried out by three or more researchers or a research team.
University of Bradford library offers a systematic reviews advisory service for PhD students, staff and researchers undertaking full systematic review.
References
Boell SK and Cecez-Kecmanovic D [2015] On being 'systematic' in literature reviews in IS.Journal of Information Technology. 30[2]: 161-173.
Centre for Reviews and Dissemination [2009]Systematic Reviews: CRD's guidance for undertaking reviews in Healthcare.//www.york.ac.uk/media/crd/Systematic_Reviews.pdf. Accessed 14 Aug 2019.