Systematic reviews: Students and systematic reviews - key advice

Who this page is for?

Advice on this page is for

• undergraduate and masters students asked to carry our a systematic review for an assignment.
• Major Project students opting to submit a systematic review.
• PhD students or researchers carrying out one-person reviews without a second screener.

Before you start

Have you been asked to carry out a systematic literature review or to search systematically? A systematic review is a specific methodology. Searching systematically can just mean searching thoroughly in an organised way.

Are you clear about what a systematic review is and why they are important? Use the introduction page of this guide and your course material to familiarise yourself with the basics.

Try reading some published systematic reviews related to your topic to see the principles applied in practice. Don't be alarmed by the scale of published systematic reviews, they are carried out over a longer time period by a team of researchers.

Student systematic review versus full systematic review

Student systematic reviews are less detailed than full systematic reviews because of the time you have available and assignment restrictions. You still need to be comprehensive, rigorous and clear about your methods. You need to critically analyse and synthesize your results whilst accounting for bias. Unlike full systematic reviews, you are probably working as a single researcher. You will follow the fundamental principles but the full process will be modified. These modifications may include: 

• Having a target number of studies to write about. Full systematic reviews do not predetermine how many studies to include - they can legitimately end up with small numbers of studies.
• Using fewer databases than a full review and excluding Grey literature.
• Carrying out a narrower / more focused search so results are manageable - keywords alone may be used rather than incorporating subject headings.
• Cross-searching of databases on single platforms may be permitted - to save time and remove exact duplicates automatically.
• Critical analysis checklists may not be needed.
• Other modifications may be specified by your module leader / supervisor.

It is important to check assessment requirements, marking criteria, and your supervisor's expectations.

Help from the Library

Questions can be submitted in different ways from our Contact Us page or using the Library tile on the Ask ARU portal.

Subject Librarians offer appointments for more in-depth help. Please book using the Study Skills Appointments service.

The Library can support you by offering guidance on the following steps:

• scoping your topic
• database selection
• Keyword selection and search strategy formulation/logic checks
• Downloading results
• Reference management using RefWorks
• PRISMA flow diagram principles

Questions on other aspects of the systematic review process should be directed to module leaders or supervisors.

Help with Meta Analysis

The Study Skills Plus Maths and Stats guide has specific advice on Meta analysis - including links to maths workshops and one-to-one support services when available.

Doing a 'systematic review' as a student

Student systematic reviews are not full systematic reviews. They are a modified version following similar methodological principles and reporting requirements. You are doing a very ‘real’ piece of work that should be academically challenging - but not a full systematic review.

There are no set guidelines for carrying out a student systematic review, but common elements are listed below.

Common steps in a student systematic review

It is important to check and follow assessment requirements, marking criteria and your supervisor's expectations.

1. Scope your topic to check that it is viable.
2. Formulate a clear research question that may be constructed using PICO or similar framework.
3. Carry out the same single, structured search on more than one academic database.
4. Search using keywords designed to retrieve a comprehensive set of references relevant to the research question. Keywords are combined into a logical search using Boolean operators (AND / OR / NOT).
5. Pool all results from the different databases and removing duplicate records.
6. Screen results based on inclusion and exclusion criteria to end up with set of references that specifically answer the research question.
7. Report the methods used so the steps taken are clear and your marker could repeat if necessary.
8. Show the screening process and selection of included studies using a PRISMA flow diagram.
9. Summarise the data in your included studies using a data extraction table.
10. Synthesise the data from your final studies; critical analysis of your sources is needed and may be accompanied by statistical analysis of data (meta-analysis).

This worksheet may help you to plan and record your search using PICO or similar.

Getting started - scoping your topic

Scoping your topic helps you assess how much and what sort of published literature exists for your topic. You can carry out as many searches as you need to get an idea of the amount and type of material available on your topic. You can use general resources such as Library Search or Google Scholar as well as academic databases. This will help you to clarify your question and make sure the review is 'do-able' in the time you have. 

Search in the way you would for other purposes but ask for help if you feel you're not searching effectively. 

Here are some initial questions to ask before you start your student systematic review.

• Do you understand the purpose of your Systematic review and have a clearly defined research question? If not, you will encounter problems at the searching and screening stage.
• How much time have you got for the project? You need to retrieve a manageable number of results to screen in the time you have available.
• Is there enough published literature on my topic? For student purposes, you need to have enough material to analyse and write about. Some assignments may specify an acceptable number of papers to have at the end of your screening process. This is one main difference between student and full systematic reviews which do not have a target number.
• Is there enough of the right sort of literature on my topic?  If you are attempting a meta-analysis (statistical synthesis), you need enough sources likely to include comparable data.
• Has a systematic review been done on my topic recently? Check with your supervisor to see how this impacts your project. In effect you would be repeating much of the same work that has already been done.

At the end of your scoping process, you should know if your question is viable. If not, you may have gathered ideas to adapt your question. Contact your supervisor with questions about your research topic or specific research question.

Source of information on the systematic review process

Use this guide and linked information to find out more about different elements of the process that you could apply to your work.

The following books provide an overview of systematic reviews with some subject specific titles.

You might find some resources on the Systematic Review reading list useful to refer to.