Five SLR protocol examples, step by step

Explore one published review at a time. See how its topic leads to research questions, keywords, a Boolean search, eligibility rules, appraisal and synthesis. Then use the same reasoning to plan your own review.

Use the method, not the answer. Published articles are reports of completed reviews, not blank protocols. “Reported in article” identifies source information; “classroom example” marks a teaching breakdown or keyword expansion. A missing detail is labelled “not stated” rather than guessed.

Reported in articleClassroom breakdownNot stated in article

Quality assessment: what to plan in your protocol

Quality assessment (QA) is a structured check of how much confidence to place in the methods and findings of studies that meet your eligibility criteria. It usually informs interpretation and synthesis; it is a separate decision from whether a study is relevant enough to include.

Choose an approach that fits your evidence. Match the appraisal checklist or risk-of-bias tool to your study designs and review question. PRISMA helps report a review; it is not itself a quality-assessment checklist. Do not copy another review’s score threshold without explaining why it suits your own review.

What the five example papers did

Example paper	Appraisal approach	Scoring / decision	Assessors reported
Smart villages	5 questions linked to the review questions	High = 1, medium = 0.5, low = 0; retain score >2	Not stated
Generative AI in higher education	5-item checklist adapted from CASP	Binary 0/1; minimum 3/5	2 independent reviewers; discuss differences and consult a third if needed
Machine translation	3 review-specific questions	High / medium / low; minimum 2/3	2 reviewers; Cohen’s κ = .73
Learning-style identification	3 review-specific questions	High / medium / low; minimum 2/3	2 reviewers; Cohen’s κ = .75
Deep learning and edge computing in agriculture	5 quality criteria	1, 0.5 or 0; minimum 3/5	Not stated

How to read this comparison: the examples use different numbers of questions, scales and cutoffs. Their total scores are not directly comparable. The examples show how authors report a decision rule; they do not establish a universal QA threshold.

Write these decisions into Protocol Item 11

Tool and rationale. Name the checklist/framework and explain why it fits your included study designs.

Domains or questions. State what you will assess, such as sampling, measurement, analysis or reporting.

Rating and decision rule. Define each response, any score calculation, threshold and how you chose it.

Reviewers and process. Specify independent assessors, pilot/calibration, and how disagreements will be resolved.

Use of appraisal. Say whether QA affects inclusion, sensitivity analysis, grouping or interpretation; give your rationale.

Practical sequence: pilot the checklist on a few eligible papers, clarify ambiguous criteria, assess the full set consistently, then report item-level results and explain how they shaped the synthesis. Avoid hiding important weaknesses inside a single total score.

PRISMA 2020 reporting guidance ↗Cochrane Handbook: considering risk of bias ↗

Example 1 of 5Systematic review

Ready to plan your own protocol?

After reviewing all five examples, use the blank protocol template for your own topic. Draft every decision before running the search; record actual search dates, database-specific strings and result counts only after testing them.

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All article-specific facts below were checked against the uploaded full texts. Search counts are the counts reported by those articles; they are not the results of a search conducted for your own review. DOI links open the publisher record.