Scoping Review vs. Mapping Review: Are They the Same Thing?

If Both Reviews Map a Field, What Makes Them Different?

You want to identify what research exists across a broad field. You plan to search systematically, classify the studies, show where evidence is concentrated, and identify areas where research appears sparse.

Is that a scoping review? A mapping review? A systematic map? An evidence map?

The uncomfortable answer is that the terminology is not completely standardized across disciplines and evidence-synthesis traditions. Scoping and mapping approaches share several features, and some publications treat the terms as closely related or even interchangeable. Other methodological traditions distinguish them according to their purpose, analytical structure, or intended output.

That makes the methodological description more important than the label itself.

They Overlap, but You Should Not Assume They Are Identical

Why Scoping and Mapping Reviews Are Easy to Confuse

Both Approaches Ask What Evidence Exists

Scoping and mapping approaches often begin from a similar problem: the literature is too broad, diverse, emerging, or fragmented to jump immediately to a narrowly focused synthesis question.

Instead of asking only whether an intervention works or whether a specific association exists, researchers may want to know what has been studied, which populations or contexts dominate the literature, what methods have been used, how concepts are defined, or where evidence is concentrated.

Both approaches can therefore involve broad searches, explicit eligibility criteria, systematic study selection, structured data extraction or charting, classification of studies, and descriptive presentation of the evidence base.

Scoping Reviews Usually Begin With a Broad Evidence-Synthesis Question

JBI describes scoping reviews as reviews with broader scope and correspondingly less restrictive inclusion criteria than the focused questions typical of many systematic reviews. JBI commonly structures scoping questions around Population, Concept, and Context, or PCC.

The resulting review can address several objectives. Researchers may examine the extent of available evidence, identify the types of evidence available, clarify key concepts or definitions, examine how research has been conducted, identify characteristics related to a concept, or investigate knowledge gaps.

PRISMA-ScR similarly describes scoping reviews as evidence syntheses used to assess the scope of literature on a topic and notes that they may help determine whether a systematic review is warranted.

Mapping Approaches Often Emphasize the Distribution of Evidence

The term mapping review is used less consistently. In some methodological traditions, mapping approaches classify studies according to predefined dimensions so that researchers can see where evidence is abundant and where it is sparse.

The result may resemble a structured map of the research landscape. Studies might be classified by intervention, outcome, population, methodology, geographic region, theoretical framework, or another set of dimensions relevant to the review.

This emphasis becomes particularly explicit in evidence and gap maps. Campbell Collaboration evidence and gap maps organize available evidence across defined categories to show where research exists and where gaps remain. Campbell distinguishes this purpose from a systematic review that synthesizes findings to answer a more focused question.

The Distinction Is Not Universal

This is the caveat that matters most: there is no single taxonomy accepted across all fields.

Researchers in health sciences may encounter well-developed JBI guidance for scoping reviews. Researchers in software engineering may encounter systematic mapping studies. Environmental evidence synthesis has its own systematic mapping traditions. International development and social-policy researchers may encounter evidence and gap maps. Other disciplines may use evidence map, literature map, and mapping review in different ways.

Two reviews with similar procedures might consequently receive different labels because they emerge from different methodological communities.

An Evidence and Gap Map Is More Specific Than the General Idea of Mapping

Evidence and gap maps, often abbreviated as EGMs, provide a useful example of why terminology needs precision. Campbell describes an EGM as a product that identifies and organizes the available evidence across a broad area. Unlike a systematic review that may synthesize effect estimates to answer a focused question, an EGM primarily shows what evidence exists.

Typically, evidence is organized against predefined dimensions such as intervention categories and outcomes. This can make concentrations and gaps visible to researchers, funders, policymakers, and other decision-makers.

Not every mapping review is an EGM. The term refers to a more specific evidence-synthesis product with its own methodological conventions.

Mapping Does Not Necessarily Mean Bibliometric Mapping

Another common source of confusion arises from bibliometric research. Bibliometric mapping can visualize relationships among publications, authors, journals, keywords, citations, or other bibliographic entities. Co-citation networks, bibliographic coupling, co-authorship networks, and keyword co-occurrence maps are examples.

Those analyses can be useful for understanding the intellectual, conceptual, or social structure of a research field, but they are not automatically equivalent to a scoping review or evidence map. The unit of analysis, inclusion logic, research objective, and synthesis procedures may be substantially different.

Outputs Can Help Reveal the Difference

Imagine two projects examining digital mental health research.

One project asks what digital mental health interventions have been studied, how "engagement" has been defined, which populations have been represented, and what methodologies researchers have used. Its output may consist of descriptive tables and a thematic account of the evidence landscape. That fits naturally with a scoping-review objective.

Another project creates a matrix crossing categories of digital interventions with categories of mental health outcomes and places the available studies into the resulting cells. Its principal contribution is showing where evidence is concentrated and where cells are empty or thinly populated. That resembles an evidence-mapping objective.

The boundary can still blur. What matters is whether the review question, classification system, methods, and outputs correspond to the methodology being claimed.

Neither Approach Should Be Chosen Merely Because the Literature Is Large

A large literature does not automatically require a mapping review, just as a broad topic does not automatically require a scoping review. First determine what information you need from that literature.

If you need to clarify concepts, characterize evidence, or examine how research has been conducted, a scoping review may fit. If the primary objective is to classify the distribution of evidence across a structured framework and reveal concentrations and gaps, a mapping methodology may be preferable.

If instead you need to answer a focused question about findings, effects, associations, experiences, or another substantive outcome, you may need a systematic review rather than either mapping approach. The distinction between systematic and scoping review objectives is therefore worth resolving before choosing a broader mapping label.

Scoping a Field and Mapping Its Distribution Are Related but Different Goals

The projects may retrieve many of the same publications. What distinguishes them is not necessarily the database search but what happens to the evidence after it is identified and what the review is designed to reveal.

Common Misunderstandings About Scoping and Mapping Reviews

Define the Product You Want Before Naming the Review

Because terminology varies, start with the purpose and intended output rather than asking which label sounds most familiar.

Whatever terminology you choose, name the methodological framework you followed. That single step resolves much of the ambiguity. "We conducted a scoping review following JBI methodology" tells readers considerably more than simply saying "we mapped the literature."

Before Calling Your Study a Scoping or Mapping Review

Questions About Scoping and Mapping Reviews

Similar Purpose Does Not Mean Identical Methodology

How to Cite This Guide

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