Scoping Review vs Systematic Review: Which Should You Write?

Few review-type decisions cause as much avoidable rework as this one. A team spends months screening abstracts, then a reviewer writes that the manuscript is “not really a systematic review” or “not really a scoping review”, and the paper stalls. The label you choose controls the registration route, the reporting checklist, the amount of appraisal you owe, and the journals that will read the paper.

This guide sets out how the two designs differ, how to choose, and what to prepare before you start. It draws on the published methods literature (Arksey and O'Malley, Levac, Munn, Tricco and the JBI manual) rather than on any one journal's house view, and it flags the places where policy may have changed since I last checked.

What Separates a Scoping Review from a Systematic Review

The two formats look alike from a distance. Both start with a defined question, both use a documented search across several databases, and both rely on two people screening records independently. That surface similarity is why so many authors pick the wrong one. The difference lies in what the review is allowed to conclude.

A systematic review answers a focused question about effectiveness, accuracy, prevalence or association. It judges the quality of each included study, synthesises the results, often pools them statistically, and ends with a verdict of some kind, even if the verdict is that the evidence is too weak to say. A scoping review answers a broader question: what has been studied on this topic, how, in which populations, with which definitions and outcomes, and where are the gaps? It maps the evidence. It does not weigh it.

The methodological literature draws this line fairly consistently. Arksey and O'Malley described the original scoping framework in 2005, Levac and colleagues refined it in 2010, and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) published formal guidance in 2015 and revised it in the years after. In 2018, Munn and colleagues published a paper in BMC Medical Research Methodology titled “Systematic review or scoping review?” that gives authors a practical list of when each approach fits. If you read only one methods paper before deciding, that is a sensible choice.

Scoping Review or Systematic Review: Matching the Question to the Format

Start with the sentence you would like to write in the abstract conclusion. If it is “Drug A reduces mortality compared with drug B”, the format is a systematic review, probably with a meta-analysis if the studies are similar enough. If the sentence is “Fifty-three studies have examined remote monitoring in heart failure, most are small single-centre trials, and no study reports patient-reported outcomes beyond six months”, you are describing a landscape, and a scoping review fits.

Munn and colleagues list several situations where a scoping review is the better tool. These include clarifying how a concept is defined across the literature, identifying the types of evidence available, examining how research is conducted in a field, finding knowledge gaps, and checking whether a full systematic review is feasible before committing to one. The last use is underrated. A scoping review that shows only four eligible trials, each measuring a different outcome, can save a team a year of work on a meta-analysis that could never have been pooled.

The reverse mistake is common too. Authors with a narrow clinical question sometimes call their work a scoping review because they want to skip risk-of-bias assessment. Editors notice. A question that can be framed with a clear population, intervention, comparator and outcome is usually a systematic review question, and a journal reviewer is likely to say so.

Scoping Review vs Systematic Review: Process and Appraisal Differences

Under the surface, the workflows diverge in four places. First, the question. Systematic reviews typically use PICO or a close variant and keep eligibility criteria tight. Scoping reviews use the broader Population, Concept, Context (PCC) framework recommended by JBI, which tolerates more variation in study design and outcome.

Second, critical appraisal. Systematic reviews assess risk of bias, with tools such as RoB 2 for randomised trials or ROBINS-I for non-randomised studies of interventions. Scoping reviews generally do not appraise study quality, although JBI guidance acknowledges that appraisal can be done when a team has a reason to. If you do skip it, say so plainly in the limitations, because readers will otherwise assume that every study in your map is equally trustworthy.

Third, synthesis. A systematic review combines findings, narratively or quantitatively. A scoping review charts them: a table or figure that records study characteristics, populations, concepts and outcomes, followed by a descriptive summary. There is no pooled estimate and no certainty-of-evidence grading in the GRADE sense.

Fourth, the output. Systematic reviews are written to inform a decision. Scoping reviews are written to inform the next study, the next review, or a research agenda. Both are legitimate. They are different products.

Registration, Protocols and Where PROSPERO Fits

Registering a protocol is expected for systematic reviews, and the usual home is PROSPERO, the international register run from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York. As far as I could confirm from its published inclusion criteria, PROSPERO does not accept scoping reviews, and it points authors of ineligible reviews to other options. Policies change, so read the current eligibility page before you plan around it. Some older slide decks and library guides still say otherwise.

The common alternative for scoping reviews is the Open Science Framework (OSF) Registries, which is free and accepts protocols of any review type. Some teams instead publish a full protocol in a journal such as BMJ Open or JBI Evidence Synthesis, which gives a citable record and a round of peer comment before the work starts. A protocol matters here for the same reason it does in a systematic review: it fixes your eligibility criteria and charting plan before you see the results, and it lets a reader check that you did what you said.

Our guide to PROSPERO registration covers the systematic review route in detail. For scoping reviews, the practical advice is simple: register something, somewhere public and time-stamped, before you screen a single abstract.

Reporting Guidelines: PRISMA-ScR or PRISMA 2020?

The reporting checklist follows the review type. Systematic reviews report against PRISMA 2020, which has a 27-item checklist and a flow diagram. Scoping reviews report against PRISMA-ScR, published by Tricco and colleagues in Annals of Internal Medicine in 2018. It has 22 items (20 required and 2 optional) and adapts the PRISMA structure to evidence mapping, for example by asking authors to describe how data were charted rather than how bias was assessed.

Do not mix them. Submitting a scoping review with a PRISMA 2020 flow diagram and checklist, or the reverse, is one of the quickest ways to signal that the team has not understood its own design. Most journals ask for the completed checklist at submission, and some ask for the registration identifier in the abstract as well.

A related point: PRISMA is being updated for systematic reviews, and our post on the 2026 update covers what is changing. As of this writing I have not seen a revised PRISMA-ScR, so the 2018 version remains the one to cite. Check the PRISMA website before you submit in case that has changed.

How Journals Treat Each Format

Not every journal takes scoping reviews. Some clinical titles publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses but state in their instructions that they do not consider scoping reviews, narrative reviews or evidence maps. Others, particularly in nursing, public health, rehabilitation, medical education and health services research, publish them regularly and may have a dedicated article type. JBI Evidence Synthesis and BMJ Open are well-known homes, but both receive a high volume, so being listed as a venue is not a prediction of acceptance.

Before you start, read the article-type page of two or three target journals. Search recent issues for the phrase “scoping review” in the title and see who actually publishes them. If a journal has not run one in three years, the policy page may be out of step with practice, or it may be telling you the truth. A short pre-submission enquiry to the editorial office costs little.

Reviewers also have habits. A scoping review that is really a thin literature summary will be flagged as narrative. A systematic review without a registered protocol and a risk-of-bias assessment will be flagged as incomplete. Our guide on narrative versus systematic review journals covers how editors sort these cases at desk review.

Common Mistakes Editors See

The most frequent error is choosing the scoping label to avoid work. A scoping review still needs a reproducible search strategy, ideally built with a librarian, dual screening, a charting form tested on a sample, and a clear account of what was excluded and why. It is lighter on appraisal and synthesis, not on discipline.

A second error is drawing effectiveness conclusions from a map. Statements such as “the evidence supports the use of” do not follow from a count of studies. Describe what exists and what is missing. Leave claims about benefit to reviews that appraised the evidence.

A third is an unbounded question. “Artificial intelligence in medicine” is not a scoping question, it is a field. Define the population, the concept and the context tightly enough that someone else could repeat your search and arrive at roughly the same set of records.

The fourth is skipping the consultation step. Arksey and O'Malley, and later Levac and colleagues, describe an optional stage in which stakeholders (clinicians, patients, policymakers) review the findings. It is optional, but it is one of the things that makes a scoping review more than a bibliography, and readers value it.

A Short Decision Guide

If you want a quick route through the choice, ask four questions in order. Can the question be answered with a comparison or a measurable effect? If yes, write a systematic review. Is the literature too varied in design or definition to pool? If yes, a scoping review may suit better. Do you need to know whether a systematic review is feasible? If yes, scope first. Do your target journals accept the format? If not, change the journal or the design before you write anything.

The meta-analysis question sits one level below this. If you have settled on a systematic review, you still need to decide whether the studies can be pooled; our comparison of meta-analysis and systematic review walks through that decision.

Whatever you choose, state the design in the title. “A scoping review” or “A systematic review and meta-analysis” helps readers, indexers and editors, and it commits you to the right checklist.

Write your intended conclusion sentence, check it against the one-line test above, and then open the article-type pages of your top two journals. If both accept your chosen format, register a protocol publicly, download the matching reporting checklist, and build the search with a librarian before screening begins. If neither accepts it, change the plan now, while the cost of changing it is a conversation rather than a rewrite.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a scoping review and a systematic review?

A systematic review answers a focused question about effects, usually with quality appraisal and synthesis. A scoping review maps what evidence exists on a broader topic, typically without appraising study quality or pooling results.

Scoping review or systematic review: which is easier?

Neither is easy. A scoping review involves less appraisal and no statistical pooling, but it still needs a reproducible search, dual screening and a structured charting process. It often takes months of team effort.

Can I register a scoping review on PROSPERO?

PROSPERO's inclusion criteria, as I last read them, exclude scoping reviews. Most teams register on the Open Science Framework or publish a protocol in a journal. Confirm the current policy on the PROSPERO site.

Which reporting guideline should I use?

Use PRISMA-ScR (2018) for scoping reviews and PRISMA 2020 for systematic reviews. Do not mix the checklists.

Further Reading