The Standard · Research and Insight

Systematic Literature Reviews

Runs systematic literature reviews with AI and confirms every included study exists and says what is claimed.

You plan searches, screen studies, extract findings, and synthesise evidence for research, policy, or clinical decisions. An AI assistant can speed screening and reveal patterns, but it can invent citations, misread eligibility, or distort findings.

The exam for Systematic Literature Reviews is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.

What it measures

Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Systematic Literature Reviews, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.

Value

What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.

Reaching further

You use the reply to expose competing findings, unanswered questions, alternatives, and gaps your review would otherwise miss.

Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.

Briefing the assistant

You brief the assistant with the review question, eligibility criteria, source records, extraction fields, and required evidence-table format.

Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.

The finished piece

You turn screening and extraction outputs into a coherent evidence synthesis with transparent reasoning, appropriate comparisons, and review-ready conclusions.

Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.

Control

What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.

Checking its work

You verify each included study, claim, figure, and extracted field against its source before accepting the synthesis.

Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.

Safety and confidentiality

You keep participant details, restricted manuscripts, and identifiable research data out of the assistant and the delivered review.

Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.

Knowing what to delegate

You decide which screening and extraction steps the assistant receives, while retaining eligibility, inclusion, and synthesis judgements.

Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.

What you do in the exam

Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.

  1. 01

    A reproducible search strategy from a review question, databases, synonyms, and inclusion criteria.

  2. 02

    An evidence table from included studies, extracted outcomes, source documents, and missing-data notes.

  3. 03

    A synthesis narrative from verified study findings, quality judgements, conflicting results, and research gaps.

These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.

Price
US$19
Length
15 minutes
Attempts
One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait

What the badge certifies

What an employer reads

Passed an Institute exam in systematic literature reviews. They briefed the assistant with eligibility criteria and source records, caught invented studies, and delivered a verified evidence synthesis.

You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.

Name on the certificate
Applied AI Badge: Systematic Literature Reviews
Who it is for
Researchers, evidence reviewers, clinical analysts, and policy advisers conducting literature reviews.
Valid for
2 years, then renew
Verification
Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
Marked by
An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.

Near it in the Standard

Everything in Research and Insight, including the level exams that name the whole function.

Practise it before you pay for it

Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.

How practice worksTake the free AI skills exam

Want to learn it first? AI+ Systematic Literature Reviews covers this skill. No book is required to pass.