Systematic Review
Systematic Reviews (SR) are the integrative and retrospective scientific investigations in which the unit of analysis is the primary original studies from which it is intended to answer a research question clearly formulated through a systematic and explicit process. (1) The methodology for conducting a systematic review involves:
• Outlining a clear set of objectives
• An unequivocal and reproducible methodology
• The systematic and thorough search of all potentially relevant articles;
• The selection, by explicit and reproducible criteria, of items that will eventually be included in the review;
• The description of the design of the original studies, the synthesis of the data interpretation, results and the assessment of the validity which is then presented in a systematic fashion (2)
Advantages of systematic reviews include that it produces reliable conclusions, able to convey vast amount of information easily and enables comparison and contrasting of results from numerous studies.
By contrast, the Literature Review does not follow a systematic process and cannot be considered a formal research process. Traditional literature reviews have two basic weaknesses. First, there is no standard on how to get the raw data, how to integrate the results; what prevails is the subjective judgment of the inspector. Second, the literature review is not quantitative and the researcher summarises the data found in various publications, therefore, these reviews are