Overview
Scoping reviews are popular with graduate researchers because they suit emerging or messy topics, where studies use different designs and definitions and a single pooled answer is not realistic. That popularity has a downside: reviewers frequently reject 'scoping reviews' that are really unsystematic literature reviews, or systematic reviews with the appraisal step quietly removed.
We keep your review anchored to its purpose. Together we write a Population–Concept–Context (PCC) question and objectives that justify a mapping approach, plan an iterative but documented search, design a charting form that captures exactly what your objectives ask about, and present results as evidence maps, tables and a narrative summary rather than effect estimates.
The methodological lineage matters to examiners, so we are explicit about it: Arksey and O'Malley's five-stage framework (with its optional consultation stage), the refinements proposed by Levac and colleagues, current JBI Manual guidance and the PRISMA-ScR reporting checklist.
Who it’s for and the problems it solves
This is for you if you are…
- Master's students whose dissertation is a stand-alone scoping review
- Doctoral researchers mapping a field before designing primary studies or a later systematic review
- Health, education and social policy teams asked to map evidence for a program or funder
- Authors whose scoping review was returned by reviewers for weak methods or unclear reporting
Common problems we help with
- You are not sure whether your question calls for a scoping review or a systematic review
- Your protocol reads like a systematic review and your supervisor asks where the mapping purpose is
- The charting form keeps growing and you cannot decide what to extract
- You have hundreds of included sources and no clear way to present them
- You planned to register on PROSPERO and are unsure where a scoping review protocol belongs
What’s included — and what isn’t
Included
- A check that a scoping review fits your aim, with a short written rationale you can adapt for your methods section
- Developing the PCC question, objectives and sub-questions, and inclusion criteria covering source types, languages and dates
- Protocol drafting following JBI guidance and PRISMA-ScR items, ready for registration on OSF Registries or submission to a protocol-publishing journal
- A three-step JBI-style search: an initial limited search to identify terms, a full search across all agreed databases, and reference-list and grey-literature searching
- Search translation across databases and documentation of every strategy
- Two-stage screening support in Covidence or Rayyan, including piloting and independent second screening where appropriate
- A draft data charting form, piloted on a sample and revised iteratively with every change recorded
- Evidence mapping: frequency tables, cross-tabulations, bubble plots or heat maps showing where evidence clusters and where gaps are
- Optional basic qualitative content analysis of charted data, and planning for the optional consultation exercise with stakeholders
- PRISMA-ScR checklist completion and flow diagram
Not included
- Writing your discussion, implications or conclusions for submission as your own work
- Adding formal risk-of-bias scoring where it does not serve your objectives just to make the review look more rigorous
- Drawing effectiveness conclusions or practice recommendations that a scoping review cannot support
- Registering the protocol on your behalf without your approval
What you receive
- Scoping review protocol
- A protocol with title, PCC question, objectives, eligibility criteria, search plan, screening and charting procedures, ready for you to review and register.
- Search documentation
- Full strategies for each database and grey-literature source with dates and yields, suitable for an appendix.
- Charting form and codebook
- A piloted extraction template with definitions for every field, plus a log of revisions made during charting.
- Charted dataset
- The completed charting spreadsheet, checked for consistency, which you can reuse for a later systematic review or bibliometric analysis.
- Evidence map outputs
- Tables and figures summarizing sources by population, concept, context, design, country and year, formatted for your style guide.
- PRISMA-ScR package
- Completed checklist and flow diagram, with notes on where each item is addressed in your manuscript.
How it works
Purpose check
We confirm that mapping, clarifying concepts or identifying gaps is really your aim and agree the PCC elements.
Protocol and registration
We draft the protocol with you. You register it on OSF or submit it to a journal before screening begins.
Search and screening
The search is run and documented, then sources are screened in two stages after a calibration round.
Charting
The charting form is piloted on a handful of sources, refined, then applied to all included sources.
Mapping and reporting
We summarize charted data into tables and visual maps and assemble the PRISMA-ScR checklist and flow diagram.
Frameworks and reporting standards we use
- Arksey and O'Malley (2005)
- The original five-stage framework: identify the question, identify relevant studies, select studies, chart the data, and collate, summarize and report, with an optional consultation stage.
- Levac, Colquhoun and O'Brien (2010)
- Refinements that tighten the link between purpose and question, recommend team-based iterative selection and treat consultation as a component to plan for.
- JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis
- Chapter 10 on scoping reviews, updated in the 2024 edition of the manual, covers PCC questions, the three-step search and charting. We cite the edition current when you write up.
- PRISMA-ScR
- The 2018 reporting extension with 20 essential and two optional items. An update is under development by the PRISMA group, so we check for a newer version before you submit.
- Registration options
- OSF Registries is the usual home for scoping review protocols. Some journals publish peer-reviewed protocols. PROSPERO's scope centres on systematic reviews, so check its current eligibility before planning to register there.
- Critical appraisal (optional)
- Not required for scoping reviews. If your objectives include describing study quality, we select a tool deliberately and report it as descriptive rather than as a basis for exclusion.
Scoping review or systematic review?
Ask what you will do with the answer. If you need to know whether an intervention works, or how large an effect is, you need a systematic review, usually with appraisal and possibly meta-analysis. If you need to know what kinds of evidence exist, how a concept is defined across studies, which methods have been used or where the gaps are, a scoping review fits better.
Scoping reviews can also be a precursor: they show whether there are enough comparable studies to justify a later systematic review.
- Broad PCC question, heterogeneous sources → scoping review
- Focused PICO question about effectiveness → systematic review
- Need to map publication trends and intellectual structure → consider bibliometric analysis
Designing a charting form that answers your objectives
Charting is where scoping reviews most often lose focus. Every field on the form should trace back to a review objective; fields that do not should go. We start with standard descriptive items (author, year, country, design, population) and add objective-specific fields such as how the concept was defined or measured, then pilot the form on five to ten sources with two people charting independently before finalizing it.
Presenting a map, not a list
A table with one row per included source is necessary, but it is not the result. Readers need to see patterns: how many studies addressed each context, which populations are missing, and whether methods have shifted over time. We help you choose visual formats, from simple cross-tabulations to bubble charts and evidence gap maps, that make the gaps obvious and support the implications you will write about.
What the work can look like
Illustrative example — fictional data
Illustrative example: digital mental health tools for university staff
A fictional master's student wants to know what research exists on digital mental health tools for university employees, not whether they work. The details below are invented to show how a scoping review is structured.
PCC question
Population: academic and professional staff in higher education. Concept: digital mental health or wellbeing tools. Context: any country, any institution type. Objective: to map study designs, tool types, outcomes measured and reported implementation barriers.
Charting and mapping
From 2,930 unique records, 61 sources were included, 18 of them grey literature. Charting showed that 44 sources evaluated app-based tools, only five included professional (non-academic) staff and none came from low- or middle-income countries: these gaps became the focus of the implications section.
Illustrative example with invented figures; it does not describe a real client or study.
What you’ll need to provide
- Your topic, why a map of the evidence is needed and who will use it
- Any preferred framework your department expects (Arksey and O'Malley, Levac, JBI)
- Institutional database access, or agreement on alternatives
- Target journal or submission requirements, including word limits for tables
- Contacts for a stakeholder consultation, if you plan one
You don’t need everything ready to ask for a quote — tell us what you have and we’ll say what’s missing.
What affects price and turnaround
Price depends on
- Breadth of the PCC question and expected number of records
- Range of sources, including grey literature, policy documents and websites
- Number of included sources to chart and the number of charting fields
- Whether we act as independent second screener or charter
- Complexity of the evidence maps and visualizations required
Turnaround depends on
- Size of the search yield after deduplication
- Time for you to register the protocol before screening starts
- How quickly charting-form revisions are agreed
Every project is quoted individually. How we price our work.
Questions people ask before starting
Do I need to assess the quality of included studies?
Not usually. JBI guidance and PRISMA-ScR treat critical appraisal as optional in scoping reviews, because the aim is mapping rather than judging effectiveness. If your objectives require it, we can add an appraisal step and explain how to report it without implying it filtered your evidence.
Where should I register my scoping review protocol?
Most scoping reviews are registered on OSF Registries, which is free and accepts any discipline. You can also publish the protocol in a journal such as JBI Evidence Synthesis or BMJ Open. We prepare the protocol; you register it under your name.
Can the search change after I start?
Scoping reviews allow some iteration, but every change must be documented and justified. We keep a dated log of revisions to terms, databases and inclusion criteria so you can report deviations from the protocol transparently.
My supervisor wants me to use Arksey and O'Malley, not JBI. Is that a problem?
No. The frameworks are closely related, and JBI guidance builds on the earlier work. We follow your supervisor's preferred framework and use PRISMA-ScR for reporting either way.
How many databases should I search?
Enough to cover your topic's disciplines, which for interdisciplinary topics often means four to six databases plus grey literature. We agree a set during protocol development and justify it in writing.
Can you write the review for my dissertation?
No. You write the review. We support the method: protocol, search, screening, charting and maps, and we explain each step so you can describe and defend it.