Writing a Systematic Review: The AI way
Abstract
AbstractSystematic reviews are fundamental to evidence-based research, offering comprehensive insights for informed decision-making across various disciplines. This paper outlines a structured approach to conducting systematic reviews, emphasizing adherence to established guidelines such as PRISMA and the Cochrane Handbook. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has revolutionized the systematic review process, enhancing efficiency in literature search, data extraction, risk of bias assessment, and synthesis. AI-powered platforms like Elicit, Covidence, Rayyan, and RobotReviewer streamline various review stages, reducing manual effort while maintaining rigor and reliability. Despite these advancements, human expertise remains indispensable for critical appraisal and contextual interpretation of findings. The paper further discusses the implications of AI-driven methodologies on the transparency, replicability, and efficiency of systematic reviews. By combining traditional methodologies with AI-driven tools, researchers can enhance the quality and impact of systematic reviews while ensuring adherence to best practices.
Keywords: Systematic review, Artificial intelligence, PRISMA, Evidence synthesis, AI tools, Research methodology
References
2. Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center. AI resources for systematic reviews: Outlining the benefits to the research process. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Available from: https://galter.northwestern.edu/news/ai-resources-for-systematic-reviews.
3. Discover, Create, and Publish your research paper [Internet]. Scispace.com. Available from: https://scispace.com
4. Elicit: The AI research assistant [Internet]. Elicit.com. Available from: https://elicit.com/
5. PROSPERO [Internet]. York.ac.uk. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php
6. Covidence - Better systematic review management [Internet]. Covidence. 2020 [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.covidence.org/
7. ResearchRabbit [Internet]. ResearchRabbit. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.researchrabbit.ai/
8. Rayyan. Rayyan: AI-powered systematic review management platform [Internet]. Rayyan.ai. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.rayyan.ai/
9. EPPI-Reviewer: systematic review software [Internet]. Ioe.ac.uk. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=2914
10. RoB 2: A revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials [Internet]. Cochrane.org. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://methods.cochrane.org/bias/resources/rob-2-revised-cochrane-risk-bias-tool-randomized-trials
11. Ottawa hospital research institute [Internet]. Ohri.ca. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.ohri.ca/programs/clinical_epidemiology/oxford.asp
12. RobotReviewer [Internet]. RobotReviewer. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.robotreviewer.net/
13. Cochrane Account Login [Internet]. Cochrane.org. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://login.cochrane.org/realms/cochrane/protocol/openid-connect/auth?client_id=revman-web&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Frevman.cochrane.org&response_type=code&scope=openid%20profile&nonce=07433f4e75a7f0cc6402bc5b1b8515f8576E6Y637&state=a11e313bf596802a95e6de751e1b3bbb50Frl2pq3&code_challenge=nQgbMYyUVR0Onl1URlJzwP-qaSnQ2wJUK1jjf9smxq8&code_challenge_method=S256
14. DistillerSR. Quality assessment tools for systematic reviews. DistillerSR. Available from: https://www.distillersr.com/resources/systematic-literature-reviews/quality-assessment-tools-for-systematic-reviews.
15. Grammarly: Free AI writing assistance [Internet]. Grammarly.com. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://app.grammarly.com/
16. Zotero [Internet]. Zotero.org. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.zotero.org/
17. Mendeley - Reference Management Software [Internet]. Mendeley.com. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://www.mendeley.com/
18. AI academic writing tool - online English language check [Internet]. Paperpal.com. [cited 2025 Mar 3]. Available from: https://paperpal.com/
19. Susnjak T. PRISMA-DFLLM: An extension of PRISMA for systematic literature reviews using domain-specific finetuned large language models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.14905. 2023. Available from: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14905.