Mapping the Landscape of Systematic Reviews in Industrial Engineering: A Scoping Review

As the amount of published literature continues to grow at a rapid pace, researchers are increasingly using evidence synthesis methodologies, such as systematic reviews. Well conducted systematic reviews support evidence-based decision-making by synthesizing the known literature on a topic into a single article. A key component of systematic reviews, compared to narrative literature reviews or surveys of the literature, is that the methods should be reported in a way that is transparent and reproducible. In this scoping review, the authors investigate the prevalence and quality of systematic reviews in industrial engineering, as a subgroup analysis of a previously conducted scoping review of multiple engineering disciplines. The literature search was conducted in the databases Compendex, Inspec, and ERIC and retrieved 8,957 articles after removing duplicates, with 886 ultimately included. The results show the number of published systematic reviews in industrial engineering has been increasing, especially over the last five years, and there is global representation in authorship. However, the quality of reporting of the included systematic reviews is low and suggests researchers struggle with reproducibility and transparency. Recommendations are made for how industrial engineering researchers, journal editors, and librarians can collaborate to improve the quality of industrial engineering systematic reviews.