Question and Answer

What’s the difference between a systematic review and scoping review?

Both systematic and scoping reviews require rigorous and transparent methods in their conduct to ensure that the results are trustworthy. 

Systematic reviews aim to identify and retrieve international evidence that is relevant to a particular question and to appraise and synthesize the results of this search to inform practice, policy and sometimes further research.

Scoping reviews are designed to determine the scope or coverage of a body of literature on a given topic and to indicate the volume of literature and studies available as well as an overview (broad or detailed) of its focus.

Learn more

Munn Z, Peters MDJ, Stern C, Tufanaru C, McArthur A, Aromataris E. Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2018;18(1):1-7. doi:10.1186/s12874-018-0611-x.

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