Boxer Library
Inclusion and exclusion criteria set the boundaries of what type of sources will be eligible for your review. During the title/abstract screen, these criteria will help to determine what types of studies can be included and which ones can be excluded. Ideally these elements will be embedded in an article screening tool which is used by the research team. Each review is different and what criteria you use depends on the goals of your review. Commonly used criteria include:
It is important to remember that in order for an article to move to the next stage of the review, it has to meet all of the inclusion criteria but it only has to meet one of the exclusion criteria to be excluded. Peer reviewers of the review in the publication stage will evaluate the relevance of the criteria you set as it is a foundational piece of the review, so choose wisely. Each one should have direct relevance to the sources you are seeking to review. Many researchers will create arbitrary criteria, like only looking at studies from the past ten years or only looking at studies published in English. Remember that the goal of evidence synthesis reviews is to find ALL of the relevant literature. Consider the fact that certain criteria may introduce bias into the review process. For example, limiting to only studies published in English may introduce a language (and even country) bias into your review.
You should explain any inclusion or exclusion criteria you choose. An example would be adding a date limiter because you’re looking at a new medication or therapy that was recently created (consider whether your search terms will be specific enough that you will not need a date limiter) or limiting to English due to no one on the team speaking another language and you are unable to hire translation services. You should make those reasons clear in your review.
Depending on the kind of review you are doing, you may only need inclusion OR exclusion criteria. For example, JBI recommends that you only need inclusion criteria for scoping reviews. Check the best practices of the organization (JBI, Cochrane, etc.) you are using to guide your review to see what their recommendations are for inclusion and exclusion criteria.
