Search across guide titles, topics, keywords, and content throughout the Researcher's Field Guide.
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DOIs, PMIDs, ISBNs, ISSNs, and ORCID iDs all identify different things. Learn which identifiers help you find, verify, distinguish, and manage research sources without treating them as interchangeable.
Read Guide →Not every literature review requires a formal protocol, but structured evidence syntheses generally benefit from prospective methodological planning. For systematic and scoping reviews, a protocol helps establish the question and methods before the emerging evidence can influence important decisions.
Read Guide →Preregistration creates a time-stamped public record of a planned review before its findings are known. It can strengthen transparency and help distinguish prespecified methods from later changes, but registration options and requirements differ between systematic and scoping reviews.
Read Guide →Two reviewers do not need to perform every systematic-review task independently, but independent duplicate assessment is an important safeguard at consequential stages. In major guidance such as Cochrane, final study inclusion decisions and outcome-data extraction require at least two people working independently.
Read Guide →There is no fixed number of years after which another review becomes justified. A recent review may still need updating or replacing if its question, methods, coverage, or evidence base no longer supports the answer researchers need.
Read Guide →Evidence should not influence a synthesis simply according to how many studies support each conclusion. Study limitations, relevance, precision, consistency, and the question being answered all affect how much confidence different findings warrant.
Read Guide →A literature review should distinguish what the evidence suggests from what it firmly establishes. Certainty depends on more than how many studies report similar findings.
Read Guide →You usually cannot prove that you found every relevant paper. What you can do is design, test, document, and cross-check your search well enough to make missing important literature reasonably unlikely.
Read Guide →Your final search should be recent enough that important new evidence is unlikely to make the submitted or published work materially outdated. Formal review standards may specify a maximum interval, while other projects require a judgment based on how quickly the field changes.
Read Guide →Finishing the writing does not freeze the evidence base. When new research appears, assess whether it changes your claims, synthesis, research gap, or conclusions, then revise proportionately rather than automatically rewriting everything.
Read Guide →A researcher’s background and position can influence what questions seem important, who participates, what people disclose, how evidence is generated, and how findings are interpreted. The relevant influences depend on the particular researcher, study, setting, and methodology.
Read Guide →Research objectives can sometimes change after data collection begins, but the timing and reason matter. Legitimate amendments should be distinguished from changes made because researchers have already seen results they prefer.
Read Guide →An objective promises more than the design can deliver when it requires evidence or an inference that the planned study cannot validly produce. The remedy may be to narrow the objective, strengthen the design, or reconsider the research question rather than merely changing a few verbs.
Read Guide →A baseline is a reference point established before the change, intervention, or follow-up of interest. It can be essential for some questions, useful for others, and unnecessary when the study does not depend on measuring a starting condition.
Read Guide →Data collection methods make different trade-offs between depth, breadth, standardization, and flexibility. Understanding those trade-offs can help you choose a method that fits what your research question actually needs.
Read Guide →A representative sample is meaningful only in relation to a specified population. Learn what representativeness actually requires, how researchers assess it, and why not every worthwhile study needs a statistically representative sample.
Read Guide →A research protocol benefits from review by people who can evaluate its scientific logic, methods, analysis, feasibility, and ethical implications. The right reviewers depend on the study, and formal ethics review should not be confused with the broader methodological review a protocol may need.
Read Guide →Preregistration records important research decisions before the results are known, while Registered Reports add peer review before the study is completed. Neither requires researchers to predict everything perfectly or abandon legitimate changes and exploration.
Read Guide →Preregistration creates a time-stamped record of important research decisions before the relevant results are known. Its main value is making it easier to distinguish advance plans from decisions influenced by the data.
Read Guide →Preregistration records what you planned before seeing the relevant results; it does not require you to follow a flawed or impractical plan forever. Changes can be legitimate when they are disclosed, justified, and interpreted appropriately.
Read Guide →A protocol describes how you plan to conduct a study; preregistration creates a time-stamped record of research decisions before the relevant results are known. The same document can sometimes serve both purposes, but the concepts are not interchangeable.
Read Guide →Preregistration records a study plan before the relevant results are known. A Registered Report adds prospective journal peer review and in-principle acceptance, making publication less dependent on how the results turn out.
Read Guide →Preregistration can make important research decisions more transparent and encourage advance planning, but it cannot turn weak methods into strong ones. A preregistered study still needs to be evaluated on its design, measurement, sampling, analysis, execution, and interpretation.
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