Today, I am showing you how to use the PRISMA framework properly to develop a systematic Literature Review paper.
17 June 2026
Read time: 3 minutes
Before we start: free live session the week after next.
If your literature review feels like a vortex right now, you are not alone. Every week I hear from doctoral researchers who are drowning in papers, reading everything they can find, and still not sure when they have read enough.
So I am running a free LinkedIn Live session on it.
How to Do Your Literature Review and Stop Drowning in Papers Tuesday 24 June 2025 | 5:00 PM BST
I will walk through a practical, repeatable method for tackling the literature review: how to use your research question as your compass, how to identify the core areas of your topic, how to search and read strategically rather than endlessly, and how to know when it is time to stop reading and start writing.
The first half is a focused walkthrough. The second half is yours: bring your questions and we will work through the real challenges you are facing.
This is for anyone doing a PhD, DBA or professional doctorate. Open to everyone. Just come along.
Register here: How to Do Your Literature Review and Stop Drowning in Papers
Share the link with anyone in your network who would find it useful.
Now, this week's issue.
P.S. I'm live in the comments under every LinkedIn post on Mon, Tue, Thu and Sat from 2:34pm GMT. Drop by if you want to dig into the topic, and get free mentoring by asking a question, or just say hello.
The first review paper I submitted was rejected three times before it got published.
Each time, the reviewers asked the same thing: where is your flowchart?
I had done the search. I had read the papers.
I had written what I thought was a solid analysis.
But I had not documented the process properly, and without that documentation, none of it counted.
The reviewers did not care how good my analysis was.
They could not trust it because they could not see how I got there.
That rejection taught me something I now tell every mentee who is planning a systematic review:
the PRISMA flowchart is not a reporting formality you add at the end. It is the document reviewers and examiners read first.
It decides whether they trust the rest of your review before they have read a single line of your analysis.
Since then, I have supervised, reviewed, and examined enough systematic reviews to see the pattern clearly.
The ones that get accepted built their flowchart while they searched.
The ones that get rejected built it afterwards, from memory, and the numbers never quite add up.
Here is how to use PRISMA properly, in the order it is meant to be used.
The Research Insider
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