ARISMA: Guidelines for AI- and LLM-Assisted Systematic Reviews, Scoping Reviews, and Mapping Studies

Abstract

Systematic reviews, scoping reviews, mapping studies, and related evidence syntheses are increasingly difficult to conduct with fully manual workflows as search volumes, update cycles, and synthesis requirements continue to expand. At the same time, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and large language models are rapidly entering review practice across query formulation, screening, extraction, categorization, appraisal support, and reporting. Yet the empirical evidence remains uneven, task-dependent, and insufficient to justify unconstrained automation. Existing standards such as PRISMA 2020, PRISMA-S, PRISMA-ScR, PRISMA-P, PRESS, and SWiM remain essential, but none provides an end-to-end operational standard for when AI use is methodologically appropriate, how it should be validated, which review decisions must remain human-led, and how AI involvement should be reported so that readers can audit it. This paper proposes ARISMA, an AI Reporting and Integration standard for Systematic Methods and Analysis. ARISMA treats AI as an inspected, benchmarked, logged, and reversible assistant rather than an autonomous reviewer. It is built around one governing principle: every consequential scientific decision must remain human-interpretable, human-auditable, and human-accountable. The paper contributes a lifecycle taxonomy, process guidance, stepwise recommendations across the review pipeline, a governance and provenance model, a tool-support framework, an AI-integrated reporting checklist, and a validation matrix. It also addresses legal, privacy, infrastructure, and sustainability considerations. The framework was iteratively refined through structured expert consultation. The result is a practical and auditable guideline for responsible AI-assisted evidence synthesis.