Systematic Reviews in Health Sciences: Start Here

About This Tutorial

This self-paced tutorial helps you conduct a literature search for your systematic review in the health sciences.

Follow the ✅ Action Steps to grow your search skills and build a comprehensive strategy for finding health research.

Understanding Systematic Reviews

A systematic review attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question.

Researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view aimed at minimizing bias, to produce more reliable findings to inform decision making.

Source: Cochrane

📖 View examples of systematic reviews.

✅ Action 1: Is a Systematic Review Right for You?

Determine whether your research question and your timeline fit a systematic review.

Sometimes another type of evidence synthesis, such as a literature (narrative) review, may be more appropriate.

Different review types have different goals, methods, and workload. Select the review method that aligns with your research question and matches the time and resources you have.

➡️ Do this

Try the “What Type of Review Is Right for You?” tool to explore your options.
Get step-by-step guidance with the Right Review tool.

📚 Learn more about the 14 review types and how they differ in purpose and process.

🔑 Key Points

A systematic review is a team-based, publication-level research project. It requires at least three researchers and typically takes 15.5 months to complete (Borah et al., 2017).

A literature review is appropriate for coursework, theses, and research background. It can be “systematized” (using some systematic review techniques) without meeting all the requirements of a full systematic review.

Other types of evidence syntheses may be a better fit for your project.

At a Glance:

Systematic Review vs. Literature Review

Criteria	Systematic Review	Literature (Narrative) Review
Research Team	Team-based (3+ researchers)	Can be completed by one researcher
Purpose	Publication-level research	Coursework, theses, dissertations, background in research articles
Methods	Requires protocol, predefined methods	Flexible, may not follow a set protocol
Searching	Exhaustive, reproducible across multiple databases	Selective, focuses on most relevant studies
Timeline	15.5 months	Weeks to months
Process	Rigorous screening, appraisal, data extraction, and synthesis	Summarizes and synthesizes themes
Outcome	Highest level of evidence synthesis	Provides background and context