Systematic Review

Criteria

Systematic review articles should present meta-analyses, systematic reviews, scoping reviews, or umbrella reviews that synthesize existing published research. We strongly recommend following the appropriate reporting guideline, including Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

Find out more about the following below:

Please note that non-commissioned pooled analyses of selected published research and bibliometric analyses are not considered.

Registration of Systematic Reviews

IJOMAHIP supports the prospective registration of systematic reviews and encourages authors to register their systematic reviews in a suitable registry, such as PROSPERO. If authors register their systematic review, they should include the registration number as the last line of the manuscript abstract. Note that IJOMAHIP does not publish protocols for systematic reviews.

Registering a protocol helps to improve transparency and reduce bias. It also allows researchers to discover reviews that are in progress, which reduces the likelihood of duplicating efforts. Many journal publishers now require a protocol to be registered at the outset of a review.

About PROSPERO

PROSPERO is an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care, welfare, public health, education, crime, justice, and international development, where there is a health related outcome. Key features from the review protocol are recorded and maintained as a permanent record. PROSPERO aims to provide a comprehensive listing of systematic reviews registered at inception to help avoid duplication and reduce opportunity for reporting bias by enabling comparison of the completed review with what was planned in the protocol.

PROSPERO is produced by CRD and funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Reviews should ideally be registered before screening against eligibility criteria commences. Other review registries are available, such as OSF (Open Science Framework), which can be used to pre-register a protocol and share documents. Unlike PROSPERO, OSF does not require protocols to be reviewed by an editorial board before acceptance. Scoping reviews may not be registered with PROSPERO but can be registered with the Open Science Framework or Figshare.

Data Sharing

IJOMAHIP highly recommends that all datasets essential to the conclusions of your paper are accessible to readers. Authors are encouraged to deposit these datasets in public repositories (when suitable and available) or include them directly within the main manuscript or supplementary files whenever feasible.

Preparing your manuscript

Your manuscript must include specific section headings, with each section containing the required information. Crucially, you must include a “Declarations” section with all of its specified subheadings (see below for details).

Title page

The title page should:

present a title that includes, if appropriate, the study design e.g.:
- “A versus B in the treatment of C: a randomized controlled trial”, “X is a risk factor for Y: a case control study”, “What is the impact of factor X on subject Y: A systematic review”
- or for non-clinical or non-research studies a description of what the article reports
list the full names and institutional addresses for all authors
- If a collaboration group should be listed as an author, list the Group name as an author. To make individual members of the Group searchable through their individual IJOMAHIP records, include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section.
- Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not meet authorship criteria. Accountability for the work is a key component of authorship, which LLMs cannot effectively fulfill. Any use of an LLM must be documented in the Methods section (or a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.
indicate the corresponding author

Abstract

The Abstract should not exceed 300 words. Minimize abbreviations and do not include references. Randomized controlled trial reports should adhere to the CONSORT extension for abstracts. Include these separate sections:

Background: the study context and purpose
Methods: the study design, Inclusion/ exclusion, search, quality, data extraction, analysis
Results: the main findings
Conclusions: the summary and potential implications for policy, practice and future research
Trial registration: If your article reports the results of a health care intervention on human participants, it must be registered in an appropriate registry and the registration number and date of registration should be stated in this section. If it was not registered prospectively (before enrollment of the first participant), you should include the words ‘retrospectively registered’.

Keywords Three to seven keywords representing the main content of the article.

Introduction

The Introduction section should explain the study’s context, aims, a literature summary, and why this research was needed or how it contributes to the field. It states the review question; provides background information about the problem, intervention or population; and gives rationale for the question.

Methods

The methods section should describe how the systematic review was conducted. This section includes information about the criteria for including or excluding studies; how the search for studies was conducted; how the primary studies were assessed for quality and by whom; and how data from the included studies were extracted, analyzed and synthesized.

Results

The results section should present the study’s findings, including statistical analysis results in the text, tables, or figures as appropriate.

This section summarizes the findings reported in the individual studies included in the systematic review, including:

methodological quality of those studies;
key characteristics of the studies (e.g., demographics of study participants, setting, sample sizes, inter- ventions, intervention comparisons, risk of bias); and
effect of the interventions on outcomes.

Discussion

This section should summarize the main results of the review, compares the findings of the review to existing literature, and states limitations of the review. The discussion section also includes the author’s interpretation of the results and their implications for policy, practice and future research.

Conclusions

This should state clearly the main conclusions and provide an explanation of the importance and relevance of the study reported. It summarizes recommendations for policy, practice and future research.

List of abbreviations

Define any abbreviations used in the text upon their first use and include a comprehensive list of all abbreviations used.

Declarations

All manuscripts are required to include a section titled ‘Declarations’ which must contain the following:

Ethics approval and consent to participate
Consent for publication
Availability of data and materials
Competing interests
Funding
Authors’ contributions
Acknowledgements
Authors’ information (optional)

Refer to the information below for details on what to include in each section. If a section is not relevant to your manuscript, include the heading and state “Not applicable.”

Ethics approval and consent to participate

For manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data, or human tissue:

Include a statement on ethics approval and consent, even if approval was waived.
Provide the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number, if applicable.

For studies involving animals:

Include a statement on ethics approval.
For experimental studies involving client-owned animals, include a statement on informed consent from the client or owner.

See our editorial policies for further details.

If your manuscript does not involve animal or human data or tissue, state “Not applicable” in this section.

Consent for publication

If your manuscript includes any individual person’s data (details, images, videos, etc.), you must obtain consent for publication from that person, or their parent/guardian if they are a child. Consent is required for all case reports.

You can use your institutional consent form or our form. Do not submit the form with your manuscript, but be prepared to provide it upon request (even after publication).

See our editorial policies for detailed information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, state “Not applicable” in this section.

Availability of data and materials

All research papers must contain a section called “Availability of data and materials.” This section should detail where the data supporting the paper’s findings can be accessed. If the data is publicly available, provide links to the online archives. “Data” refers to the minimum amount necessary to understand, reproduce, and expand upon the research. We understand that data sharing is not always possible due to privacy or other concerns. In these cases, the data availability statement should explain why the data is not publicly available and describe any conditions for accessing it.

Authors are also encouraged to archive their search strategies on searchRxiv (https://searchrxiv.org/). This platform allows researchers to store, share, and cite their search strategies by providing a DOI.

Your “Availability of data and materials” section should use one of the following statements (or a combination if multiple datasets have different access conditions):

Public Repository: “The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]”
Available Upon Request: “The datasets used and/or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.”
Included in Publication: “All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files].”
Not Publicly Available (with explanation): “The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.”
No Data Generated/Analyzed: “Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.”
Third-Party Restrictions: “The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].”
Not Applicable (No Data): “Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.”

IJOMAHIP strongly encourages you to cite any publicly available data that your paper’s conclusions depend on. These citations should be included in the manuscript and, ideally, in the reference list. Data citations must include a persistent identifier, such as a DOI, expressed as a full URL. When including datasets in your reference list, provide the minimum information recommended by DataCite, formatted according to the journal’s style.

For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS].^{[Reference number]}

Competing interests

You must declare all financial and non-financial competing interests. Refer to the editorial policies for a detailed explanation. Contact the editorial office if you are unsure whether a conflict exists.
Use author initials when describing each author’s competing interests.
If no competing interests exist, state: “The authors declare that they have no competing interests.”

Funding

Declare all funding sources for the research.
If the funder influenced the study’s conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, publication decision, or manuscript preparation, specify their role.

Authors’ contributions

Clearly state each author’s specific contributions to the manuscript. Refer to the editorial policies for authorship guidelines.
Use initials to indicate each author’s contribution. Example: “FC analyzed the data… RH performed the histological examination… All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

Acknowledgements

Acknowledge anyone who contributed to the article but doesn’t meet authorship criteria. This includes those who provided writing assistance or materials.
Obtain permission from individuals before including them in the Acknowledgements section.

Refer to our editorial policies for detailed information on acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If no one needs to be acknowledged, state “Not applicable” in the Acknowledgements section.

Group Authorship:

For collaborative manuscripts, to ensure individual members of a collaboration group are searchable, include the collaboration group’s title on the title page and in the submission system.
List collaborating author names in the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section, using the format: First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. Include institution or country information for each author, ensuring consistency across all authors if provided.

Authors’ information (Optional)

This section allows you to provide context about the author(s) to help readers better understand the article and the authors’ perspectives.
This may include qualifications, current positions at institutions or societies, or other relevant background information.
Use author initials when referring to authors.
Do not include any information about competing interests in this section.

Footnotes

Use footnotes for additional information, including citations of references already in the reference list.
Footnotes should not only contain a reference citation, nor should they include complete bibliographic details of a reference. Do not include figures or tables in footnotes.
Number text footnotes consecutively. Use superscript lowercase letters (or asterisks for significance values) for table footnotes.
Do not use reference symbols for footnotes to the title or authors.
Always use footnotes instead of endnotes

References

For Medical research, use the International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICMJE) recommendations while for Health Sciences-related research, use the American Psychological Association (APA) reference style.

See our Editorial Policies for author guidance on good citation practice.

Figures, tables and additional files

See Author Guidelines for information on how to format figures, tables and additional files.

Submit Systematic Review

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Systematic Review