1. CONDUCTING AND PUBLISHING CRITICAL
REVIEWS
PROFESSOR JON ADAMS
PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH
FACULTY OF HEALTH
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY
SENIOR FELLOW & SENIOR MENTOR
INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM
DEPARTMENT OF PRIMARY CARE HEALTH SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

2. CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CRITICAL
REVIEWS?
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Critical reviews are thematic/narrative based reviews that can incorporate
both quantitative and qualitative studies
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Focused beyond efficacy (not systematic reviews/meta-analyses)
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Can address Important public health, health services and health social
science questions
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Providing state-of-the-art, rigorous, critical overview for readers; aiding
the field by supplying comprehensive analyses of literature
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Can feed directly into practice and policy change
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Increasingly published in prestigious medical & health journals

3. TYPICAL RESEARCH AREAS/QUESTIONS FOR
CRITICAL REVIEW
• Use of traditional medicine for a particular condition OR amongst
a particular population
• Attitudes and behaviours of professionals/patients to traditional
medicine
• The relationship between traditional medicine AND rural
health/rural health care
• Communication between patients and providers regarding
traditional medicine

4. INITIAL QUESTIONS TO ADDRESS FOR A
SUCCESSFUL CRITICAL REVIEW
• A significant research topic/question that an audience may require
to be addressed?
• Is there sufficient data/publication to warrant review?
• Has anyone done a similar critical review recently?

5. CORE INGREDIENTS OF A RIGOROUS, CRITICAL
REVIEW
• Explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria
• Explicit process of literature search
• Explicit interpretation and appraisal of data
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Databases?
Hand searches? Snowball searching via references?
Keywords?
Timeframe?
Type of manuscripts/literature to be reviewed?

6. SEARCH PROCESS
• Databases?
• Hand searches? Snowball searching via references?
• Keywords?
• Timeframe?
• Type of manuscripts/literature to be reviewed?
• Language of literature to be included?

7. FINAL INCLUSION
• Screen Abstracts/full papers
• Exclude efficacy studies/trials, editorials, commentaries, etc
• Focus upon manuscripts reporting new empirical data from
research
• Work through a flow chart to help you keep check

8. INTERPRETATION, ANALYSIS AND APPRAISAL
• Familiarise yourself with all included papers
• Make rough initial notes of what they report (main findings)
• Begin to organise and group the papers via themes/broad issues
(they will often be assigned to more than one theme)
• Write up overview of main findings for each theme/issue
• Employ a pre-tested critical appraisal tool to evaluate the
methodological rigour of appropriate papers under review

9. GETTING A CRITICAL REVIEW PUBLISHED
• Choice and readership of journal
• Do they take critical reviews?
• What have previous critical reviews looked like in the journal?
• Be explicit/transparent
• Structure the paper same as any other empirical research paper