The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 25 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Writing narrative style literature reviews
Abstract
Reviews provide a synthesis of published literature on a topic and describe its current state-of-art. Reviews in clinical research are thus useful when designing studies or developing practice guidelines. The two standard types of reviews are (a) systematic and (b) non-systematic or narrative review. Unlike systematic reviews that benefit from guidelines such as PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement, there are no acknowledged guidelines for narrative reviews. I have attempted to define the best practice recommendations for the preparation of a narrative review in clinical research. The quality of a narrative review may be improved by borrowing from the systematic review methodologies that are aimed at reducing bias in the selection of articles for review and employing an effective bibliographic research strategy. The dynamics of narrative review writing, the organizational pattern of the text, the analysis, and the synthesis processes are also discussed.
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“Following preferred reporting for systematic reviews guidelines (PRISMA) (Page et al., 2020), we conducted a systematic search and narrative synthesis (Ferrari, 2015).”
From The Role and Impact of the Prison Chaplain: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis (2024) · cites this paper as Ferrari, 2015
In the citing paper
“Due to methodological heterogeneity, we combined all data through a narrative synthesis, a dynamic process consisting data extraction and visualisation, description and interpretation (Ferrari, 2015).”
From The Role and Impact of the Prison Chaplain: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis (2024) · cites this paper as Ferrari, 2015
In the citing paper
“We conducted a narrative review of literature following international guidelines for writing narrative reviews [20, 21].”
From Cognitive decline following acute viral infections: literature review and projections for post-COVID-19 (2022) · cites this paper as [20]
Citations
Cites
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Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & The PRISMA Group (2009) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097 · Cited by 64,042
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“An example of good title is: Injuries Associated with Soccer: A review of Epidemiology and Etiology.2 Literature search for the present article As an example, a literature search was performed for the present study on the lines of searches for an NR, but including features of SR methodology (Figure 1).”
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Ultra-Processed Foods and Health Outcomes: A Narrative Review
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Sustainability in e-commerce packaging: A review
Escursell, S., Llorach-Massana, P., & Roncero, M. B. (2020) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124314 · Cited by 483
AlGerafi, M. A. M., Zhou, Y., Oubibi, M., & Wijaya, T. T. (2023) · Electronics · doi:10.3390/electronics12183953 · Cited by 596
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Review of green and sustainable public procurement: Towards circular public procurement
Sönnichsen, S. D., & Clement, J. (2020) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118901 · Cited by 322
“However, the narrative literature review can be improved by borrowing from the systematic review methodologies (Ferrari, 2015), with the objective to synthesize results from multiple original studies by limiting systematic errors or bias (Cook et al.”
BackgroundMethod
Metadata
- Authors
- Ferrari, R.
- Corresponding author
- Ferrari, Rossella
- Venue
- Medical Writing
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2015-12
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 230-235
- ISSN
- 2047-4806 (ISSN-L)
- 2047-4814
- OpenAlex
- W2239104709
- Cited by
- 1,907
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 462 · 2025: 327 · 2024: 273 · 2023: 212 · 2022: 214 · 2021: 175 · 2020: 122 · 2019: 65 · 2018: 43 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 16.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Medical Writing (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Sciences Research and Education
- Keywords
- literature review writing, clinical research, best practice recommendations, systematic reviews, text structure
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