A scoping review is a type of systematic literature review that aims to map the key concepts, types of evidence, and research gaps in a particular field or topic. Scoping reviews are more exploratory in nature and focus on providing a broad overview of a topic and summarising the available evidence without evaluating its quality in depth. They are especially useful when the research area is broad or emerging, and a more in-depth systematic review might not be feasible yet.
The key difference between a systematic review and a scoping review is that scoping reviews don’t assess the quality of the evidence and they don’t tend to undertake statistical analyses to assess the effectiveness of interventions. Scoping review should follow the other stages of a systematic review.
Further information on scoping review methodology can be found on the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) website, as chapter 10 of the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis.
Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI)