Is a Systematic Review Right for Your Research?

Systematic reviews require more time and manpower than traditional literature reviews You will need two or more people to conduct a systematic review and it can take 12-18 months (or more) to complete. Depending on your research question and how much time and resources you have, you may find that a systematic review is not the right type of evidence synthesis for your research. Consider these other review types for your research as well. Per Munn et al. (2018), systematic reviews are indicated to:

• Uncover the international evidence
• Confirm current practice/ address any variation/ identify new practices
• Identify and inform areas for future research
• Identify and investigate conflicting results
• Produce statements to guide decision-making

• What Type of Review is Right for You? Review Methodology Decision Tree A decision tree for selecting a review type from From Cornell University Library. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
• Right Review Previously known as "What Review is Right for You?" this tool is designed to provide guidance and supporting material to reviewers on methods for the conduct and reporting of knowledge synthesis.
• Use the PredicTER tool to predict time requirements for evidence synthesis reviews.

Note: Be sure to clarify whether a review has already been done in your area of interest. Search the literature to discover whether a systematic review of your research questions already exists or is registered as an ongoing review. This search will help familiarize you with the literature and save you time and wasted work if a systematic review already exists and does not need updating. Per Ioannidis (2016)  the large majority of produced systematic reviews and meta-analyses are possibly unnecessary, misleading, and/or conflicted.

Some rationales for conducting an updated systematic review might be if It has been 10 or more years since the last systematic review on the chosen topic and there is currently much more literature on the topic or the previous review was methodologically flawed or focuses on a different aspect of the topic than you intend to focus on (Siddaway et al., 2019).

References

Ioannidis J. P. (2016). The mass production of redundant, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The Milbank Quarterly, 94(3), 485–514. https://doi-org.adelphi.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12210  

Munn, Z., Peters, M. D. J., Stern, C., Tufanaru, C., McArthur, A., & Aromataris, E. (2018). Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18(1), 143–143. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-018-0611-

Siddaway, A. P., Wood, A. M., & Hedges, L. V. (2019). How to do a systematic review: A best practice guide for conducting and reporting narrative reviews, meta-analyses, and meta-syntheses. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 747–770.