Can I conduct a Systematic Review as my Master’s dissertation or PhD thesis? Yes, It Depends!

First, when talking about the systematic review, I refer to it as a process, not a product. You may follow the systematic reviewing process, but the product may be called a scoping review, an umbrella review, a network meta-analysis, a realist review, an evidence gap and map, a systematic review and so on. So it does NOT mean that just because you follow a systematic process in your literature review, you should call it a systematic review! Find the best name for your academic child.

Second, although I wrote this post on systematic review and evidence synthesis; however, its content could be generalised to any secondary study which is based on already existing data, including scientometrics, bibliometrics, altmetrics, content analysis, data mining, process mining, etc.

I structure this post based on Rudyard Kiping’s six serving men: What and Why and When And How and Where and Who! If you don’t have time to read this, I respect that; please don’t waste your time and jump to Conclusion :D

What: An entire dissertation or just a chapter?

Yes, both are possible.

My bachelor’s dissertation was a report on ‘censorship’, and its entirety was a literature review. I…