How to Write a Systematic Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Template

Learning how to write a systematic literature review is one of the first serious research skills a PhD scholar or postgraduate student has to master, often under real time pressure — a thesis chapter deadline, a supervisor's review, or a standalone publication target. Unlike a general or narrative review, a systematic literature review follows an explicit, reproducible method for finding, screening, and synthesizing evidence.

Done well, it becomes one of the most cited and most useful chapters of a thesis, and can often be published as a standalone paper in its own right. Done poorly, it reads as an unstructured summary of papers with no clear logic connecting them.

This guide breaks the process into a repeatable template you can apply to almost any field, along with the common mistakes that get systematic reviews sent back for major revisions.

Key Takeaways

• A systematic review differs from a narrative review by using a documented, reproducible search and screening protocol.
• Defining a precise research question and inclusion/exclusion criteria before searching prevents scope creep later.
• PRISMA-style reporting (or your field's equivalent standard) makes your process transparent and defensible to reviewers.
• Synthesis, not summary, is what separates a strong systematic review from a weak one.
• Reference management software is not optional at this scale — manual tracking of screened papers breaks down quickly.

Systematic Review vs. Narrative Review

A narrative review is a flexible, author-driven summary of literature on a topic, useful for orienting readers but not bound by a fixed method. A systematic review, by contrast, follows a predefined protocol for searching databases, screening results against explicit criteria, and extracting data in a consistent format — making the process transparent and, in principle, repeatable by another researcher.

Aspect	Narrative Review	Systematic Review
Search process	Informal, author's judgment	Documented, multi-database, protocol-driven
Selection criteria	Not usually pre-specified	Explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria set in advance
Reproducibility	Low	High, given the same protocol
Typical use	Background/introduction sections	Standalone thesis chapters or publications
Reporting standard	None required	Often follows PRISMA or a field-specific equivalent

Choosing a Framework for Your Research Question

Before you can search systematically, you need a structured way to break your research question into searchable components. Health sciences researchers commonly use PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome), while qualitative and social science researchers often use frameworks like SPIDER (Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type) or simply a thematic breakdown of key concepts.

Whichever framework fits your discipline, the goal is the same: turning a broad topic into a small set of concrete concepts you can translate into search terms. A question like "how does remote work affect productivity" becomes far more searchable once broken into its component concepts — remote work, productivity, and the specific population or context you care about, such as knowledge workers or a particular industry.

The Systematic Literature Review Template: Step by Step

The following sequence is a practical adaptation of standard systematic review methodology. Depending on your field, you may need to adjust terminology (for example, a "PICO" framework in health sciences versus a broader thematic framework in social sciences), but the underlying logic holds across disciplines.

1

Define a focused research question

Frame a question narrow enough to search systematically but broad enough to yield a meaningful body of literature. A question that is too broad produces thousands of irrelevant hits; one that is too narrow may return almost nothing.

2

Set inclusion and exclusion criteria in advance

Decide on publication date range, language, study type, population or context, and methodology requirements before you start searching, not after you see the results. Deciding criteria retroactively introduces bias.

3

Choose your databases and build search strings

Select at least two or three relevant databases for your field (such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, or IEEE Xplore) and build Boolean search strings using your key terms and their synonyms.

4

Screen titles and abstracts

Apply your inclusion/exclusion criteria first at the title and abstract level to remove clearly irrelevant records, keeping a log of how many records were excluded and why.

5

Conduct full-text screening

Read the remaining full texts against your criteria in more depth. This stage typically removes another substantial portion of the initial pool.

6

Extract data in a consistent format

Use a standardized extraction table (author, year, method, sample, key findings, limitations) so that comparisons across studies are consistent and traceable back to the source.

7

Assess study quality

Apply an appropriate quality or risk-of-bias assessment tool relevant to your field to flag weaker studies rather than treating all included papers as equally reliable.

8

Synthesize findings thematically

Group findings by theme, methodology, or outcome rather than simply summarizing paper after paper in sequence. This is where genuine analytical contribution happens.

9

Report your process transparently

Document your search strategy, screening flow (often as a flow diagram), and any deviations from your original protocol so another researcher could, in principle, replicate your steps.

Structuring the Written Review

Once the screening and extraction work is complete, the writing itself typically follows a fairly standard structure, though section names vary by field and journal.

Introduction and Rationale

Explain why this review is needed now — what gap in the existing literature it addresses, and why a systematic approach (rather than a narrative summary) is the right tool for this question.

Methodology

Describe your search strategy, databases, date ranges, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and screening process in enough detail that a reader could understand exactly how you arrived at your final set of studies.

Results and Synthesis

Present your findings organized by theme, methodology, or research question, not simply chronologically or paper by paper. Use tables and figures to summarize study characteristics where it aids clarity.

Discussion and Gaps

Interpret what the synthesized evidence means collectively, note contradictions between studies, and clearly articulate what gaps remain — this section often becomes the direct justification for your own subsequent research.

Limitations

Be explicit about the boundaries of your own review — languages excluded, databases not searched, a cut-off date beyond which newer studies were not captured. Acknowledging these limitations upfront is a sign of methodological maturity, not a weakness, and reviewers generally respond better to a well-documented limitation than one they have to point out themselves.

Common Mistakes That Weaken a Systematic Review

• Summarizing instead of synthesizing — describing each paper in isolation rather than connecting findings across studies.
• Vague or shifting inclusion criteria — criteria that appear to have been adjusted mid-process to fit whatever was found.
• Single-database searches — relying on only one database, which can miss substantial relevant literature.
• No quality appraisal — treating a small pilot study and a large, rigorous study as equally authoritative evidence.
• Missing PRISMA-style flow documentation — reviewers increasingly expect a transparent screening flow, even outside health sciences.

Managing the Time Investment

Systematic reviews are consistently underestimated in project timelines, partly because the search and screening stages look mechanical from the outside but are actually quite labor-intensive. A search string that returns two thousand records might take a determined researcher several full days just to screen at the title and abstract level, before full-text screening even begins.

Build buffer time into your thesis or publication schedule for at least one additional screening pass, since it is common to discover during full-text review that your initial criteria need minor refinement. If you are working with a supervisor or committee, share your draft protocol before you begin searching — a ten-minute conversation at this stage can save weeks of rework if your criteria turn out to be too broad or too narrow.

Tools That Make the Process Manageable

At the scale most systematic reviews require — often screening hundreds or thousands of initial records down to a final set of a few dozen — manual tracking in a spreadsheet quickly becomes unreliable. Reference managers such as Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote help deduplicate records and organize citations, while dedicated screening tools can speed up the title/abstract review stage considerably.

Whatever tools you use, keep a clear audit trail. Examiners and peer reviewers frequently ask systematic review authors to justify specific exclusions, and being able to point to a documented, consistent process is far stronger than reconstructing your reasoning after the fact.

It also helps to version your protocol document as you go. If you refine your inclusion criteria after an initial trial search, note the date and reason for the change rather than silently overwriting your original plan — this record becomes valuable if an examiner or reviewer later asks why your final criteria differ slightly from an earlier proposal or registered protocol.

Adapting the Template Across Disciplines

While the core logic of systematic review methodology — explicit criteria, documented search, transparent synthesis — holds across fields, the emphasis shifts depending on discipline. Engineering and computer science reviews often lean heavily on technical databases like IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library, and may include software or algorithm comparisons rather than clinical outcomes. Social science and humanities reviews tend to allow more thematic, interpretive synthesis, since studies are often qualitative and not directly comparable numerically.

Before finalizing your protocol, look at two or three recent systematic reviews published in your specific subfield and note how they structured their methodology and reporting. Matching the conventions your target audience already expects makes your review easier to evaluate and more likely to be taken seriously by examiners and reviewers alike.

Getting Support Along the Way

A systematic literature review is one of the areas where an experienced second opinion pays off disproportionately, since early methodological choices — your research question, your database selection, your inclusion criteria — shape everything downstream. If you are structuring your first systematic review, working with an eSupervisor who has published reviews in your field can help you avoid a protocol that looks reasonable on paper but produces unmanageable or biased results in practice.

If you are further along and need hands-on help with database searching, data extraction, or synthesis writing, ResearchDecode's literature review consultancies connect you with researchers who do this work regularly. You can also post a specific request if you need help with just one stage, such as building your search strategy or checking your PRISMA flow diagram.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many papers should a systematic literature review include?

There is no fixed number — it depends entirely on how much literature exists on your specific question and how tightly you set your inclusion criteria. Some systematic reviews synthesize a dozen studies; others synthesize hundreds. What matters is that your final set is the genuine, documented result of your search and screening process, not a number chosen in advance.

What is PRISMA and do I have to follow it?

PRISMA is a widely used reporting checklist and flow diagram standard originally developed for health sciences systematic reviews, now adapted informally across many other fields. You are not always required to follow it strictly outside health sciences, but adopting its transparency principles — a clear search strategy and documented screening flow — strengthens a review in any discipline.

Can a systematic literature review be published as a standalone paper?

Yes, and many journals specifically welcome well-executed systematic reviews as standalone submissions, particularly in fields where synthesis of existing evidence has clear practical value. Check your target journal's guidelines, since some prefer original empirical research over review articles.

How long does a systematic literature review usually take to complete?

Realistically, a thorough systematic review can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months, depending on the volume of literature, the number of databases searched, and how many people are involved in screening. Rushing the screening stage is one of the most common ways quality suffers.

What is the difference between a systematic review and a meta-analysis?

A systematic review synthesizes findings qualitatively or thematically, while a meta-analysis goes a step further by statistically combining quantitative results across studies to produce a pooled effect estimate. A meta-analysis is only possible when the underlying studies are similar enough methodologically to combine meaningfully.

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