How do you write a systematic review? Practical steps
Many people embarking on scientific research, whether to obtain a high academic degree or to enrich scientific content, face many challenges in the beginning, starting with how to choose the research topic, measure its feasibility, and then conduct a systematic review of it.
In this article, we tried to answer the question of how to choose a research topic by measuring its feasibility scientifically and explaining how to write a systematic review for it in practical steps, with reference to all the auxiliary tools (free and paid), to complete each stage in a comprehensive guide.
First, you must ask yourself whether this is an appropriate topic to write a good review on. To be able to answer this question, do the following
1. First, do a simple review to build a good idea about the topic. This study will include broad outlines of previous research works on the same targeted topic, as this initial review will help you transform scientific research hypotheses into researchable questions and titles. In this stage, you need a general idea of the search terms to select the extent of what is present and available in a topic. Your scientific research.
2. If the frameworks in the previous simple review do not fit your scientific research, here are some other frameworks that may help you break down your question into researchable concepts:
Do a quick search on Google Scholar (or any other suitable database, e.g., PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Prospero) to find a review similar to or close to your research. If you find a comprehensive review on the same topic, you must answer a question: What would you add to the comprehensive review you want to write yourself? Therefore, there must be sufficient and convincing reasons for your effort in scientific research to be distinguished. Distinction could be, for example, in customizing the topic more so that it is accurate and detailed and in comprehensiveness so that the review includes most of the research published until the moment the review is written.
Should this be a systematic review? (Systematic Review)
3. There are many types of scientific reviews, and having a good knowledge of the types of these reviews and the differences between them can help you know how to formulate a scientific research question, what you will need to research, and how to present your scientific results and outputs. (Grant and Booth, 2009 — Sutton et al. 2019)*
Plan your research project
4- Having a reference for your research (comprehensive review) can help you greatly in terms of instructions and preparing the necessary reports and statistics, and through it, you can plan well what you should take into consideration when looking at the different types of studies used, for example:
5. For other options, use the Systematic review toolkit.
6- You can also start planning data extraction tables/forms.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
7- Age, conditions, results, type of study, minimum numbers, publication, language, dates, etc., are all possible criteria that you may use to decide which articles you want or do not want to include in your study.
8- Be clear about the general context of the review; present the reasons for choosing the topic, and your points of distinction.
9. It must be written in the scientific research methodology section (Methodology).
Develop A Search Strategy
10. Use keywords and subject headings to develop your search strategy. A guide can help PICO Research in detailing your concepts and searching effectively using logical value or by conducting a simple initial review. As mentioned in the previous first step, translate your research separately from each database.
11. Document the strategy used: titles, topics, and keywords.
12. Indicate the databases used and any identifier related to the database, such as stipulated or applicable dates.
Manage Your Citations
After conducting your research, organizing and managing the output will save you time and effort.
13. Create an account in the databases and systems you use for research, allowing you to have a website Library On the web; PubMed, EBSCO, ProQuest, and Scopus create a free account to save search collections, article collections, and even search strategies. This will allow you to repeat the search if something happens to the results and check if there are new articles as you write and just before submitting.
14. To conduct a systematic review, make sure you put all the citations you find into your citation management database, so even if you can quickly tell that an article is off-topic from the title, it should not be removed until you have done a proper title/abstract review with multiple reviewers.
15. Getting the numbers right when adding the remove duplicates step to a flowchart PRISMA is also important.
16. Use the citation management tool you choose, such as Microsoft EndNote, Publish & Perish, Mendeley, and so on, because they are considered good and free alternatives.
Screening for a systematic or Scoping Review
17. Organizing and removing duplicates: Some tools and programs help with this, paid tools such as coexistence or DistillerSR, And free tools like Rayyan.
18. Usually, the title and summary of the review are first, followed by the full research paper. In a systematic review, you need to check inter-rater reliability.
19. Neutrality and avoiding bias — Do not think about proving your hypothesis; you must accept and evaluate all logical hypotheses.
20. Is there enough for a systematic review? Or should it be a review of the scope of the research?
Assess Study Quality
It is not supposed to review every scientific paper or scientific research within the scope of the research. Still, the quality and impartiality must be considered when reading the papers that will be included. Even in writing a regular review of a research paper and putting the questions on a checklist, CASP will ensure you use good research.
21. You need high-quality articles before you start data mining. Use the tool of your choice to evaluate the quality and/or bias of the articles you are considering for inclusion.
- Bias assessment
- Critical evaluation skills program CASP
- Consort CONSORT 2010
Extract Data
Gather the information you want to compare from each sheet.
22. Use a Checklist Such as STROBE to consider appropriate data elements for the question or find an appropriate reporting checklist in the EQUATOR network.
23. Enter the data into a spreadsheet STROBE menu
🆕Update
24. If there are new articles in the databases — re-run the search you saved to ensure nothing new appears, or you can use a service Google Alerts — It will alert you of every new article published on your research topic.
Analyze Data and Write Up
25. In short.
26. Try to be Neutral and Avoid bias.
27. Learn more about organizing your paper if you are writing in hopes of scientific publication in a prestigious journal.
Conclusion
Writing is of special importance to researchers, as it enables the researcher to narrate the results of his experiments and tests; no matter how advanced technology is and how different scientific publishing tools are, scientific writing will remain the tool for spreading and sharing science throughout the ages, so it was necessary to develop this skill and hone it with sound practice.
This article initially discusses the definition of systematic reviews and the correct practices for writing them. Then it addresses specific scientific steps to obtain a high-quality review that qualifies it for publication in prestigious publishing houses worldwide.
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🌐 References
- Anthea Sutton, Mark Clowes, Louise Preston & Andrew Booth, Meeting the review family: exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements, Health Information & Libraries Journal, 36, 2019 pp. 202–222.
- Julian P.T. Higgins & James Thomas, Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, Second Edition, Wiley Online Library, 2019, pp. 1–12
- Maria J. Grant & Andrew Booth, A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies, Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26, 2009, pp.91–108.
