Getting your publication right – Part 5 structuring a research manuscript: A guide to writing systematic reviews and meta-analysis

Abstract

Systematic reviews use explicit, reproducible methods to identify, select, and analyze the included studies qualitatively and quantitatively to provide the available evidence on the topic. Multiple databases are searched using relevant keywords to identify the articles on the topic being reviewed. Gray literature search, hand searching of speciality journals, and conference abstract searching are also done to identify any unpublished data on the topic. A minimum of two reviewers should select articles from the searched data using inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data extraction is done from the selected articles, and the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis of the included articles are done to arrive at the evidence available.