Systematic Literature Reviews

Abstract

Narrative literature reviews, systematic literature reviews, meta reviews, meta analyses, research in context: what should you do when you are asked to provide a review of the literature? What may have served as a fairly routine task in your early years as a student or scholar has been complicated by the growing volume of published research and the interdisciplinarity of many domains. It is becoming common practice to not only meticulously document the methods of your research design, but also to demonstrate the ways in which you searched the literature. Furthermore, there is increased value in the use of reviews to summarize the literature and find evidence across published results. Review articles have high value to the field—as demonstrated through citations—but can also lose their value when authors use ad hoc approaches or fail to acknowledge bias in how the review was assembled or analyzed.

Systematic literature reviews (SLRs) offer a way of producing less biased and more generalizable findings. SLRs use explicit selection criteria and a rigorous, rules-driven approach to the analysis of prior scholarship. The presenters will walk participants through the process of designing and conducting a systematic literature review using Cochrane-Campbell protocols, discussing bibliometric sources for systematically identifying literature, and providing tips and suggestions based on their own research experience.