Review articles can be of three types: literature/narrative reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis.
Literature Review is a general survey of literature on the research topic. It provides a reliable account of the current understanding of the topic. It provides an overview of what is known about the research topic with the aim of evaluating the materials. In most cases, these are topic based and are usually presented in a narrative format.
Systematic Review of the Literature (SLR) as the name implies,
is a systematic way of collecting, critically evaluating, integrating, and presenting findings from across multiple research studies on a research question or topic of interest.
Source: Pati D, Lorusso LN. How to Write a Systematic Review of the Literature. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal. 2018;11(1):15-30. doi:10.1177/1937586717747384
Systematic review is more detailed and focuses on a more specific research question. It covers among others information on search strategy used, eligibility criteria for inclusion of studies, methods used to review the collected information. The essence of conducting a systematic review of literature is to identify, evaluate and synthesize research results in order to create a summary of current research findings that can contribute to evidence-based practice.
Systematic reviews are guided by protocols which describe the rationale, hypothesis, and planned methods of the review.
Meta Analysis is similar to systematic review as they both focus on a defined research question. Meta analysis further compares and evaluates defined number of similar studies with particular focus on contrasting study findings.