About The JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports

The JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports

The JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports was the name, from its online launch in late December 2012 until the end of 2019, of the journal now published as JBI Evidence Synthesis. It was — and under its new name remains — the official evidence-synthesis journal associated with JBI (formerly the Joanna Briggs Institute) and its international collaboration, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Its online ISSN under the title recorded here is 2202-4433; its successor title carries ISSN 2689-8381. This profile therefore documents a journal under its former title: the title changed, the ISSN changed, and the mission did not.

That identity point is the single most important thing for readers of this record to understand. A citation to "JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports 2017;15:1987-1990" and a citation to "JBI Evidence Synthesis" from 2020 onwards are citations to the same continuing journal at different points in its history, in the same way that a journal that changes publisher keeps its back archive. JBI itself states the lineage plainly: JBI Evidence Synthesis was "launched in late December 2012 under its former name, JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports", and publisher coverage lists show the old title running to 2019 and the new title running from 2020. On this site, the successor title has its own separate record (JBI Evidence Synthesis, post 7854, ISSN 2689-8381), which at the time of writing still carried only a short template profile; the two records describe successive titles of one journal, not two competing journals.

Quick facts

What kind of journal this is

Most journals publish primary research. This journal was created to publish the layer above primary research: rigorous syntheses of the evidence, and reports of projects that put evidence into clinical practice. Its full former name described that content exactly. The "systematic reviews" half covered protocols and completed reviews conducted to JBI methodology — reviews of quantitative effectiveness evidence, qualitative evidence, prevalence and incidence, diagnostic test accuracy, economic evidence, aetiology and risk, measurement properties, and text and opinion, among the review types JBI methodology supports. The "implementation reports" half covered the audit-and-feedback and practice-change projects, often arising from the JBI Evidence-Based Clinical Fellowship programme, in which clinical teams measured current practice against evidence-based criteria, implemented strategies to close the gap, and re-audited. A 2014 editorial in the journal describes implementation reports as the product of at least six months of intensive work by mostly clinician authors who had undertaken that fellowship — a useful corrective to any assumption that these reports are lightweight.

The publisher's current description of the successor title states the same mission in present-day terms: a peer-reviewed online journal that publishes systematic review protocols and systematic reviews of healthcare research following JBI methodology, undertaken by JBI and its international collaborating centres and groups; reviews may address quantitative or qualitative research data, text and opinion, economic data, or combinations of these; and the journal also publishes the institute's implementation reports, which present the findings of projects that seek to implement the best evidence into practice. Anyone assessing the old title should read that description as the journal's continuing self-definition.

History: from the JBI Library tradition to JBI Evidence Synthesis

JBI's synthesis publishing did not begin in 2012. JBI reviews had earlier appeared under predecessor arrangements, including the JBI Library of Systematic Reviews (ISSN 1838-2142) and JBI Reports, and the 2012 online launch consolidated that activity into a single, modern, publisher-hosted journal under the title on this record. Through the 2010s the journal became the principal channel for JBI-methodology reviews: its pages carried, among much else, the widely used JBI guidance for scoping reviews published in 2014 and elaborated in later years, the protocols and reviews produced by JBI centres worldwide, and methodological work that fed into the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis.

In 2020 the journal was renamed JBI Evidence Synthesis, with a new ISSN (2689-8381) and continuing volume numbering on the LWW platform (its articles from 2020 onwards appear in journals.lww.com under the same journal code, jbisrir, that the old title used — a small but telling sign of continuity in the publisher's own systems). In January 2023, marking the first issue of that year, JBI celebrated ten years of online publishing for the journal, quoting Editor-in-Chief Edoardo Aromataris that the journal's original mission — to publish reviews and protocols by authors who apply JBI methodology and methods — was unchanged, and that the journal had become a leading channel for diverse systematic reviews that move beyond effectiveness alone. Researchers citing pre-2020 work should cite the title as it appeared at publication (the old name), and those citing current work should use JBI Evidence Synthesis; databases and the publisher's site link the two.

Scope in practice

The journal's scope is defined less by clinical topic than by method. Any healthcare topic can be in scope — the archive ranges across nursing, midwifery, allied health, medicine, public health and health services — provided the manuscript is a genuine evidence synthesis (or implementation report) conducted and reported to JBI standards. Illustrative content from the journal's pages includes a systematic review of the effects of induction of labour in post-term pregnancies (2019, volume 17), scoping reviews such as the 2020 review of depression and anxiety screening in acute coronary syndrome care, protocols setting out review questions, inclusion criteria and search and appraisal methods in advance, and qualitative syntheses using JBI's meta-aggregative approach. A study in Research Synthesis Methods analysing JBI qualitative systematic reviews published between 2018 and 2022 — spanning the title change — shows how the journal's reviewers applied critical appraisal results in practice, and confirms that the editorial office treats the pre- and post-2020 journal as one continuing title.

Two boundaries follow. First, primary studies — trials, cohort studies, surveys, qualitative fieldwork reported on its own — do not belong here, however good they are; this journal publishes syntheses of such studies. Second, reviews that merely borrow the label "systematic" without JBI's apparatus of a protocol, a comprehensive and documented search, independent critical appraisal with JBI instruments, and a synthesis method matched to the review type will not fit. The JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, maintained as a living online manual, is the standard against which fit is judged, and prospective authors should work from its current chapters for their review type.

The review types in detail

Because fit is judged by method, it helps to name the main review families the journal has carried, and what each demands of its authors. Effectiveness reviews ask whether an intervention works, and require a comprehensive search, critical appraisal of the included studies with the appropriate JBI instruments, and, where the studies are sufficiently similar, a statistical pooling of results; where pooling is not defensible, a structured narrative synthesis is expected instead of a forced meta-analysis. Qualitative reviews use the meta-aggregative approach: findings are extracted with their illustrations, grouped into categories on the basis of similarity of meaning, and then combined into synthesised findings that can inform practice, with the confidence in each synthesised finding assessed and reported. Scoping reviews map the extent and nature of evidence on a topic, following the framework whose JBI guidance was published in this journal in 2014 and refined afterwards; they use an a priori protocol and a participants–concept–context framing, chart the data, and present the map, without the critical appraisal and synthesis obligations of a full systematic review. Prevalence and incidence reviews, diagnostic test accuracy reviews, economic reviews and reviews of aetiology and risk each have their own JBI appraisal instruments and synthesis expectations. Umbrella reviews synthesise existing systematic reviews rather than primary studies. Reviews of text and opinion apply a structured, predetermined framework to narrative and expert material, appraising authenticity and credibility rather than treating opinion as unexamined background. Mixed-methods reviews combine quantitative and qualitative strands under a convergent design. A manuscript that names its review type correctly, follows the corresponding chapter of the JBI Manual, and reports against that chapter's expectations is recognisably at home in this journal; a manuscript that mixes methods from several traditions without explaining the pairing usually is not.

Implementation reports in detail

The second half of the old title deserves equal attention, because implementation reports are the journal's most distinctive content and the part least understood by new readers. An implementation report documents a complete practice-change cycle in a real clinical setting. A team first defines best-practice criteria from the evidence — for example, criteria drawn from a systematic review or guideline on the topic. It then audits current practice against those criteria, typically by reviewing records or observing care for a defined sample of patients. Where the audit shows gaps, the team designs and carries out strategies to address the barriers it found, which may involve education, changes to documentation, new equipment, revised local procedures or feedback to staff. A follow-up audit then measures practice again against the same criteria, so the report can show, criterion by criterion, what changed. The journal's 2014 editorial on this content stresses the human scale of the work: these projects are carried out by teams of clinicians, led by a project lead, on top of already demanding clinical workloads, and typically take at least six months through a JBI Evidence-Based Clinical Fellowship. For clinicians, that is precisely the attraction of the genre: it publishes the kind of improvement work that clinical teams actually do, in a form rigorous enough for other services to learn from and repeat.

Peer review, protocols and the JBI way of working

The journal's workflow has a feature many journals lack: the protocol is itself a publishable, peer-reviewed unit. Authors commonly publish the protocol first — setting out the review question or objective, inclusion criteria framed for the review type (for example participants, concept and context in a scoping review), the search strategy, appraisal instruments and synthesis plan — and then submit the completed review, which is assessed against its own protocol. Preliminary searches of sources such as PROSPERO, MEDLINE, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and this journal are a standard part of a protocol, to show that the review is not duplicating a current or in-progress synthesis. Manuscripts are expected to follow the relevant reporting guidance and JBI's author instructions on the LWW platform, and reviews authored through JBI collaborating centres follow the institute's training and quality processes. The practical consequence for authors is that this journal rewards methodological apprenticeship: teams that have completed JBI comprehensive systematic review training, or that work with a JBI centre, will find the expectations familiar, while teams new to JBI methods should budget time to learn them before submitting.

Metrics and standing under the current title

Because indexing and citation metrics attach to the continuing journal, the figures most often quoted today are those of JBI Evidence Synthesis. Publisher product information from Wolters Kluwer lists a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 6.8 (Journal Citation Reports, Web of Science Group) for JBI Evidence Synthesis, following 4.5 for 2024 in the same listing series — figures stated here as the publisher reports them for the successor title, not as metrics of the old title in isolation. SCImago-based listings likewise track the journal under its current title with coverage from 2020. Authors should verify the current figure in Journal Citation Reports or Scopus at the time they need it, and should be precise in their own documents about which title and ISSN a metric belongs to: a metric earned under ISSN 2689-8381 should not be silently attributed to the 2202-4433 record, and vice versa. What can be said without qualification is that the journal is an established, indexed, monthly, peer-reviewed title from a major medical publisher, and that its reviews are heavily used — its scoping-review guidance and its most-cited methodology papers are standard citations across health research.

Fees, access and how to submit

The journal is published on the LWW journals platform, where current author instructions, submission links and any open-access options and charges in force are maintained. This profile does not state a specific current article processing charge for the journal, because that figure is set by the publisher and subject to change, and a current amount could not be verified from an official source for inclusion here; authors for whom a charge is decisive should confirm it on the journal's LWW pages or with the editorial office before submitting a completed review. Submission itself follows the publisher's online manuscript system for the journal under its current title, JBI Evidence Synthesis — manuscripts are no longer submitted under the former title on this record, and protocols and reviews begun under the old name continue in the same editorial system.

Is this journal right for your review?

Choose this journal — under its current name — if you are conducting a synthesis to JBI methodology and want it read by the international evidence-based healthcare community that uses JBI methods; if your review type is one that other synthesis journals handle less comfortably, such as a qualitative meta-aggregative review, a review of text and opinion, a prevalence review or an umbrella review conducted to JBI standards; if you want the visibility of publishing both protocol and review in the same journal; or if your work arises from a JBI centre, fellowship or collaboration. Look elsewhere if your manuscript is a primary study; if your review follows a different methodological tradition exclusively and you are unwilling to align reporting and appraisal with JBI instruments; or if your funder requires a metric or index listing that you have not verified for the current title. Whatever you decide, cite the journal correctly for the year of the article you use: the old title for 2012–2019 material, JBI Evidence Synthesis from 2020.

Frequently asked questions

Is the JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports still published under that name? No. From 2020 the journal is published as JBI Evidence Synthesis (ISSN 2689-8381); the name on this record covers 2012–2019.

What is the ISSN of the title on this record? 2202-4433. The successor title's ISSN is 2689-8381.

Who publishes it? Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (Wolters Kluwer Health), for JBI and its international collaboration.

Does it publish primary research? No. It publishes systematic review protocols, systematic and scoping reviews conducted to JBI methodology, and implementation reports.

Where do I submit now? To JBI Evidence Synthesis, through its pages on the LWW journals platform, following the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis and the journal's current author instructions.

Is there a duplicate record on this site? There is a separate, still-thin record for the successor title, JBI Evidence Synthesis (post 7854). It is a successive title of the same journal, not a separate journal, and it is noted here for the site's editors rather than merged by this profile.

Profile compiled from JBI's own account of the journal's tenth anniversary, Wolters Kluwer / LWW publisher product information and journal pages, publisher coverage listings showing the 2015–2019 run of this title and the 2020 onwards run of the successor title, and articles published in the journal itself. The 2025 impact figure is reported as the publisher states it for the successor title; any current submission fee is identified as not verified here rather than estimated.