Extending the scoping review framework: a guide for interdisciplinary researchers

ABSTRACT

Reviews of literature are conducted within academia to summarize and highlight gaps in findings and research approaches associated with a particular line of inquiry. Identifying sources to be included in reviews in rigorous ways can be challenging for interdisciplinary research topics, as relevant articles may be found in a wide variety of sources. Guidelines on conducting reviews rarely include step-by-step methods of identifying articles. Thus, this research note extends an existing scoping review framework by adding a more systematic method of manual searching to the common database search. As demonstrated through the application, one single rigours method of source identification is not sufficient for identifying articles in an interdisciplinary line of inquiry. The described systematic manual search presents a complementary method to the database search, rather than as a supplementary method to assists researchers in their searches of interdisciplinary topics.