Systematic Literature Review — SLR

A systematic literature review (SLR) is a structured, reproducible method for identifying, appraising, and synthesizing all relevant studies on a research question. Unlike a narrative review, it follows an explicit, pre-specified protocol — from database search strings through inclusion criteria to data extraction — so that the process is transparent, auditable, and replicable by other researchers. It is widely used in medicine, education, software engineering, and the social sciences to produce the most comprehensive possible evidence base on a topic.