Table 2: Existing works on how to conduct SLR
Whilst these guides do provide straight-forward steps for conducting
standard SLR, we believe they appear too general. Systematic literature
review needs to be structured in the true sense of structure – specific
and procedural in ways that allow for easy replication for similar
outcomes/conclusion, which is the essence of evidence. For example, what
are the pre-SLR preparations? What are the strategies that are used for
searching the literature? Many more concerns need to be
addressed/transparent and form part of methodological or studies given
SLRs help in the systematic and exhaustive search for,
collation/organization of relevant literature for analysis and
dissemination of evidence?
In the IS discipline, gathering evidence has become paramount as data
and information have increasingly become critical for every service
improvement. SLRs aid the analysis and dissemination of evidence, using
rigorous and transparent methods to generate empirically attained
answers to focused research questions. Identifying all evidence relevant
to the research questions whilst an essential component, is also a
challenge of SLRs. Below, we present steps to follow when conducting SLR
not limited to the discipline of IS.
Step 1: Pre-SLR preparations
3.1.1 Select belief and topic that align with your
research interests.
To begin any literature research, researchers must first identify the
need for such a research – topics and what problem(s) have been
identified. In other words, researchers need to establish the purpose
for such a research, thus, the summarising all extant information about
a phenomenon to establish evidence capable of being generalized.
Literature review is used to justify a need for research through A
thorough identification of the need for the research sets the basis for
step 2 below. In fact, it is the identification of research gaps that
need to fill. To identify research gaps, a reasonable amount of reading
is necessary to establish research gaps. When doing this reading,
researchers tend to touch on wide range of extant literature, which
enable them to narrow down to focused areas.
Conduct scoping reviews on published and unpublished
(grey) literature
As the name suggests, scoping reviews are carried out to map out the
extent of available literature on a chosen topic and their general
overview, preparing grounds for SLRs without necessarily paying
attention to quality and other specifics. Scoping reviews are focused on
helping to answer the question: “What information has been presented on
this topic in the literature?” and for gathering and assessing
information prior to conducting a SLR (Munn et al., 2018). Thus, scoping
review is used to derive specific questions to answer in SLR. Steps
involved in conducting scoping review has been outlined by Munn et al.
(2018).
Grey literature
Grey literature is literature or evidence not published in commercial
publications or journals outlets. Among others, grey literature could
range from theses and dissertations, academic materials, ongoing
research, working papers, briefings, conference papers, discussion
papers, government reports, and evaluations. There is debate among
evidence-based researchers on the inclusion of grey literature when
conducting SLR given their very nature – not peer-reviewed. We also
need to be aware that more recently, Open Access journals are prone to
publishing research that were rejected by non-open access journals for
poor quality due to exorbitant article processing charges as they are
increasingly doing so. We contend that the challenges of including grey
literature in SLRs are not embedded in the quality of the materials, but
rather in the search strategy. A carefully thought-out grey literature
search strategy may be an invaluable component of a SLR by thusly
reducing publication bias, increase reviews’ comprehensiveness and
timeliness, and foster a balanced picture of available evidence (Paez,
2017). Grey literature is a key part of the evidence produced and used
for public policy and practice as posit Lawrence, Houghton, Thomas, and
Weldon (2014). The authors found that “the most important or very
important resources that policy makers use are reports (81%), journal
articles (75%), discussion papers (69%), briefings, reviews and guides
(66%) and data sets (61%) demonstrating the relevance of grey
literature in policy and practice. The findings of Lawrence and
colleagues only intensifies the ongoing debate on whether to include
grey literature or not in SLR. These said, the main challenges of
including grey literature are how to search or locate them as with how
they meet the methodological requirements of articles to be included.
Whilst we do not necessarily subscribe to any camp of this debate, we
believe a scoping review on grey literature will provide an invaluable
insight into the broader evidence out there and help set some
expectations in scoping review on published literature. The outcome from
these reviews will inform a more relevant research question for the
actual SLR.