PRISMA 2020 Checklist
Everything you need to know about the PRISMA 2020 statement — the gold standard for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
What Is PRISMA?
PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) is a minimum set of items that should be reported when publishing a systematic review. The 2020 update replaced the original 2009 version with significant improvements.
Checklist items
Sections covered
Latest version
What Changed in PRISMA 2020?
Automation tools: New item requiring authors to describe any automation tools (AI, text mining) used during the review
Updated flow diagram: Separate sections for identification (databases vs. registers vs. other sources), with explicit reporting of automation
Protocol registration: Stronger emphasis on registering protocols
Certainty assessment: New item for GRADE or similar certainty assessments of evidence
The 27-Item Checklist (Summarized)
Title
Identify the report as a systematic review, meta-analysis, or both in the title
Abstract
Provide a structured summary including background, objectives, methods, results, and conclusions
Methods (Items 3–17)
Eligibility criteria: Specify inclusion/exclusion criteria and how studies were grouped
Information sources & search strategy: Databases searched, date of search, full search strategy
Selection process: Describe screening (single/dual), and any automation tools used
Data collection & synthesis: Extraction process, effect measures, synthesis methods, meta-analysis details
Bias & certainty: Risk of bias assessment, sensitivity analyses, reporting bias, certainty of evidence
Results (Items 18–23)
Study selection: Report results of search and screening with a PRISMA flow diagram
Findings: Study characteristics, risk of bias results, individual study results, synthesis results, reporting bias assessment
Discussion & Other Info (Items 24–27)
Discussion of limitations, implications, and interpretation of results
Registration/protocol info, competing interests, funding
The PRISMA Flow Diagram
The flow diagram is one of the most recognizable parts of a systematic review. It visually shows how many papers were found, screened, excluded (with reasons), and included at each stage.
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Open PRISMA Generator →Reporting AI-Assisted Screening in PRISMA
PRISMA 2020 explicitly accommodates AI tools. Under Item #8 (Selection process), report:
- 1. Name and version of the tool (e.g., "Lumina v2.0")
- 2. How the tool was used (e.g., "active learning to prioritize papers by relevance")
- 3. Stopping criteria applied (e.g., "consecutive irrelevant rule with threshold 100")
- 4. Percentage of records actually screened
- 5. Any human validation performed
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