Types

• the frequency of publication
• the format
• the subject scope of the review
• the time period
• the type of review they provide

Frequency of publication

• irregular, less than annual
• Annual.
• Periodically: monthly, semi-monthly, quarterly, etc.

Format

• separate journal
• regular feature in a journal
• irregular of special article in a journal

Subject scope

• Broad overview of the subject as a whole
• Overview of major topic within the subject
• Review of specific topic

Time period

• Multi year
• Annual
• recurring in a cycle over a multi year period
• irregular
• Currently published items.

Material included

• comprehensive -- all relevant work
• selective/comprehensive -- all major relevant work
• selective -- the best work in a field.

Type of review

• enumerative -- listing with brief descriptions
• evaluative -- judging worth of the publications included
• summarizing -- providing a state-of-the-art summary
• tutorial

Representative review series

1. Annual review of [biochemistry, anthropology , etc. ], published by Annual Reviews
   Annual Reviews
   Annual Reviews, located in Palo Alto California, is the non-profit publisher of a collection of 41 review series in specific disciplines in science and social science. Each review series contains 12 to 40 authoritative comprehensive review articles, covering the major journal articles on a...
   
    online and in print, publishes 32 series of annual volumes giving enumerative overviews of major topics within each subject, in a multi year cycle.
2. Nature
   Nature
   Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
   
    publishes a part of its weekly issues
3. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
   Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
   The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology was an annual review journal published from 1966 to 2011. It was established in 1965 by the American Documentation Institute and the National Science Foundation. It published review articles rather than empirical research articles. It's last ...
   
   

See also

• Annual Reviews (publisher)
• Meta-analysis
  Meta-analysis
  In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...
  
  
• Literature review
  Literature review
  A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic...
  
  
• Systematic review
  Systematic review
  A systematic review is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic reviews of high-quality randomized controlled trials are crucial to evidence-based medicine...