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Writing a Systematic Literature
Review: Resources for Students
and Trainees
This resource provides basic guidance and links to resources that will help when planning a systematic
review of the literature. It does not replace guidance from your research project supervisors and your
university or hospital librarians.
A systematic literature review is often the first and essential step in the research process.
A rigorously conducted literature review will help you to:
Determine what is already known about your proposed research topic /question
Appraise the quality of the research evidence
Synthesise the research evidence from studies of the highest quality
Identify research gaps and priorities for generating new evidence to fill these gaps
Avoid unnecessarily duplication of research
Shape your future research project and inform your research plan
What’s the difference between a systematic literature review and a meta-analysis?
A systematic review is a review of the literature that addresses a clearly formulated question and uses
systematic and explicit methods to:
identify publications,
select publications relevant to the question
critically appraise the publications
analyse the data reported in the relevant publications
report the combined results from relevant publications.
Meta-analysis is a statistical method that integrates and summarises results from relevant publications
selected in the systematic review. NOT ALL systematic reviews use meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is
particularly useful where the systematic review aims to determine the magnitude of quantifiable effects
attributable to e.g. a drug, a behavioural intervention, etc.
The above are based on definitions published by the Cochrane Collaboration, which is “…a global
independent network of health practitioners, researchers, patient advocates and others, responding to
the challenge of making the vast amounts of evidence generated through research useful for informing
decisions about health.” To find out more about meta-analysis and Cochrane reviews please go to
http://www.cochrane.org/
The Cochrane Collaboration website also provides a link to the Cochrane Register of Reviews which can
be searched to determine whether any reviews have been registered or completed.
This document last updated June 2014 by Yvonne Zurynski, APSU
Ensure you have a clearly defined question/ questions for the literature review and describe these in terms of
Participants, Interventions, Comparisons, Outcomes, and Study design (PICOS).