Public Health 103 (Ramírez)

Review articles summarize or synthesize content from earlier published research and are useful for surveying the literature on a specific research area. Review articles can lead you to original research articles.

• Narrative Review: a literature review that describes and discusses the state of the science of a specific topic or theme.
• Systematic Review: a comprehensive review of all relevant studies on a particular topic/question. The systematic review is created by following an explicit methodology for identifying/selecting the studies to include and evaluating their results.
• Meta-Analysis: the statistical procedure for combining data from multiple studies. This is usually, but not always, presented with a systematic review. 

Both original (empirical) articles and literature reviews are useful. One is not better than the other.

Both are:

• published in journals
• often peer-reviewed
• written by experts in the field

They are different in one important way.

• Original articles report the findings of one research study the authors conducted themselves.
• Review articles report on the findings of a variety of research studies that others conducted.

Literature reviews point you to the original (empirical) articles.