Scoping reviews are a type of knowledge synthesis, following a systematic approach to mapping the evidence on a topic and identifying key concepts, theories, sources, and knowledge gaps. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (IACHR) defines a scope review as:
‘exploratory projects that systematically map the available literature on a topic, identifying key concepts, theories, sources of evidence, and research gaps’ and notes: ‘They are often preliminary to full syntheses, and are carried out when feasibility is a concern, either because the potential relevant literature is believed to be especially vast and diverse (varying by method, theoretical orientation, or discipline) or it is suspected that there is not enough literature.
Why would anyone want to do a scoping review compared to a systematic review?
Systematic reviews are useful for answering clearly defined questions (for example, “Does this intervention improve specific outcomes compared to a given comparator in this population?”), while scoping reviews are useful for answering much broader questions (such as “What is the nature of the evidence for this intervention?” or “What is known about this concept?”).
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M18-0850
However, not enough researchers know how to conduct a rigorous scoping review.
A well-known approach to reporting the methodology used in a scoping review is the PRISMA-ScR Methodology (Preferred reporting elements for systematic reviews and meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews). This PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al. 2018) has a reporting checklist shown below.
PRISMA-ScR focuses primarily on reporting the methodology and results of a scoping review. To really learn how to do a scoping review, I would tell you the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). The JBI website has a number of best practice documents on scoping reviews. There is a complete JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis which was last updated in March 2024. Other useful documents include:
Cochrane Training has a useful video that describes what a scoping review is and provides some examples.
