OT Capstone Project

Many different standards and guidelines have been developed to help researchers perform systematic and scoping reviews.  Below are some of the most frequently cited resources.

There are two main types of guidelines:

• Methodology Guidelines: These are guidelines that will talk about how to perform a systematic or scoping review.  They will provide detailed guidance and discussion about all of the different steps to consider.
• Reporting Guidelines: These are guidelines that will talk about what you need to include in your final manuscript or write-up.  They may make mention of the different steps of the process, but will not provide much guidance on how to conduct that step, only how to describe it.

The following resources can provide guidance on how to properly conduct a systematic or scoping review.

It can often be helpful to take a look at a few different guidance documents as well to get multiple perspectives on a step and help you better understand how to proceed.

The JBI Manual is the only resource to directly address scoping reviews.  However, since scoping review methodology is based on systematic review methodology, these other resources can still be helpful.

PRISMA, or the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, is the top reporting guideline, and they have numerous extensions for different scenarios and needs.

It is important to note that PRISMA is a reporting guideline, and so includes items that should be in your final write-up; however, it is not a methodology guideline, and so may not have much detail on how to actually perform each step of the process.