LibGuides: Scoping Reviews: Step 1a: Pre-Review Tasks

Timeline

Time estimates vary widely for the completion of a scoping review, but most estimates say that a scoping review takes 6-12 months to complete. Ultimately it will depend largely on the size of your team, the time available to put towards the project, the state of the current literature on your research topic, and your expertise with systematic searching. To get an estimate of how long your review might take, use the PredicTER tool linked below.

PredicTER
PredicTER is a software tool to help researchers and practitioners estimate the length of time necessary to complete a systematic review (SR) or systematic map (SM). All stages of the SR and SM processes are included by default, as listed in the guidelines of the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE). Default values for each input are taken from a survey of environmental evidence synthesis practitioners conducted by Neal Haddaway.

Scoping Review Guidelines

JBI Scoping Review Playlist This series of short videos, produced by JBI, provide the most essential information needed to conduct a scoping review.
JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis The JBI Manual is the most widely-accepted guideline for the conduct of scoping reviews. Familiarizing yourself with the JBI manuals requirements is essential to successfully completing a scoping review.

Reporting Standards: PRISMA

The PRISMA-ScR guidelines are a set of requirements for how you write the final report on your scoping review. Reporting according to PRISMA-ScR is required for a high-quality scoping review, and is required by many publishers. Familiarizing yourself with the requirement early on in the project can help you make sure you keep track of all the required information and make the writing process smoother. Scoping reviews are reported according to PRISMA-ScR, an extension of the original PRISMA guidelines developed for systematic reviews.

PRISMA-ScR This checklist provides a birds-eye view of all the information you will need to report your scoping review.
PRISMA-ScR Statement and Explanation This article provides the rationale for each item in the PRISMA-ScR checklist as well as examples on how to meet the guidelines.
PRISMA Flow Diagrams The flow diagram depicts the flow of information through the different phases of a systematic review. It maps out the number of records identified, included and excluded, and the reasons for exclusions. Different templates are available depending on the type of review (new or updated) and sources used to identify studies.

Scoping Review Team Development

Primary Investigator/Team Leader

Responsible for overseeing the project
Ensuring the protocol is followed
Assigns tasks and timelines
Corresponds with librarian

Subject Specialist

Provides applicable vocabulary for search terms
Assists with gathering exemplar articles
Provides insight into the topic
May also participate in PI role and/or screening process

Screeners

Two screeners are required for a valid review
A third screener may be necessary to break ties
The PI and/or Subject Specialist may also screen

Librarian

Assists with search term and strategy development
Assists with choosing the appropriate databases
Assists with grey literature sources
Assists with publication questions

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A scoping review requires minimum of 2 people, not including the librarian, to complete. 3 or more team members is recommended to help resolve disputes during the screening phase, and to help reduce the individual workload of each team member.

Citation Managers

Citation managers are tools that can help you stay organized during the searching stage of a scoping review. They can be used to

Keep track of pilot and test searches
Collect together all your searches from different databases
De-deduplicate your search results

Citation Management A library guide on various citation manager software options and tutorials on how to use the software.

Avoid Repetition of Recently Published Reviews of the Same Topic

During the planning stage, it is recommended that the team searches for existing systematic and scoping reviews on related topics. This helps to ensure that you are not duplicating an existing review (a review older than 10 years old can be updated), and can also be used to help inform the search strategy and inclusion/exclusion criteria you can use in your own review. Related reviews can help you generate search terms and identify databases and journals of relevance to your topic. In addition, viewing the citations of those reviews might help you identify relevant research.

Many databases include search filters or limiters that will limit your search to just systematic reviews. If that is not available, searching for the phrase "systematic review" and "scoping review" in the title of your search results will also work.