The following are the basic steps in an evidence synthesis project. There will be some variation depending on the type of review being conducted.

1. Protocol development

• Define the research question (search for existing reviews and protocols)
• Define inclusion/exclusion criteria and data extraction plan
• Draft, test, peer review search
• Register/ publish the protocol

2. Study identification

• Conduct database searches
• Conduct grey literature searching (if applicable)
• Conduct other study identification methods (forward/backward citation tracing, hand searching)
• Deduplicate citations

3. Screening (Selecting studies)

• Pilot test screening using pre-defined eligibility criteria
• Screen article titles and abstracts
• Screen full text articles

4. Data extraction

• Extract relevant data according to pre-defined data extraction plan

5. Critical appraisal (not usually included in scoping reviews)

• Critically appraise the quality of included studies

6. Synthesis and/or meta-analysis

• Synthesize your results

7. Reporting results

• Write up the review according to a relevant reporting guideline, such as PRISMA or PRISMA-ScR