How to extract, analyze and present data in scoping reviews

Scoping reviews are a rigorous way to systematically map the breadth of evidence on a topic—often across primary studies, reviews, and gray literature—so teams can clarify concepts, identify what evidence exists, and surface gaps before committing to more outcome-focused synthesis. The core practical takeaway is that scoping reviews should be chosen for the right purpose: when the goal is to understand feasibility, appropriateness, meaningfulness, or effectiveness for practice decisions, a systematic review is usually the better fit; when the goal is to characterize concepts, definitions, study characteristics, or knowledge gaps, scoping review methods are the appropriate tool.

A key distinction from systematic reviews is the handling of critical appraisal and risk of bias. In most scoping reviews, critical appraisal is not required because the aim is not to support clinical practice change; the evidence is being mapped rather than used to judge certainty for decision-making. The guidance emphasized that scoping reviews can still take years—protocol development, broad searching across multiple databases (and often gray literature), and heavy screening are time-intensive. What changes is what happens after studies are selected: extraction, analysis, and presentation are designed to summarize and organize the available literature rather than to compute pooled effects.

The process is framed around JBI’s nine-step approach, with the first three steps focused on building a protocol as a “recipe card” for transparent, pre-specified decisions. From there, extraction becomes the central bottleneck. With hundreds of included articles, teams commonly experience “extraction marathons,” including periods of excitement after screening and later fatigue when the volume becomes overwhelming. The guidance stresses that these reactions are normal and that strong teamwork—plus careful planning—reduces errors.

Extraction should be limited to what is relevant to the review objectives. Over-extracting is a common failure mode, especially when teams try to capture everything “just in case.” Piloting extraction forms is treated as essential: teams should test how long extraction takes, whether the form misses important items, and whether the form collects too much irrelevant detail. At least two reviewers are recommended for extraction with consensus (or, if not feasible, a checking reviewer), because human error and inconsistent data entry can distort the dataset.

Where scoping reviews differ most from systematic reviews is in what gets extracted. Instead of extracting effect results for meta-analysis, scoping reviews often extract study characteristics and reporting details from across the paper—title, keywords, abstract, introduction, discussion, and limitations—plus outcomes and measurement tools when those are needed to map the literature. If the research question truly requires pooled effects, the question should be reframed toward a systematic review.

For analysis, scoping reviews rely primarily on descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and, when needed, basic qualitative content analysis to categorize barriers, enablers, or other conceptual themes. More interpretive approaches like thematic synthesis or meta-ethnography are flagged as typically beyond scoping review scope. The guidance also highlights inductive versus deductive analysis: deductive work extracts into an existing framework (e.g., a reporting checklist), while inductive work builds categories through open coding and immersion in the data.

Finally, presentation should go beyond tables to visualization that helps readers interpret large evidence maps quickly—pie charts, bubble charts, tree maps, and other graphics. Dissemination matters too: plain-language summaries and infographics (including decision trees and “big picture” review comparisons) can make scoping review outputs more usable. Reporting should follow both conduct guidance and PRISMA-ScR reporting standards, and researchers are encouraged to connect through the scoping review network for ongoing support and community learning.