Last month the EBTC staff and the Scientific Advisory Council members published a "Primer on Systematic reviews in toxicology" in Archives in Toxicology. The purpose of this paper is to provide the toxicology community with a starting point for understanding and conducting systematic reviews. The group has summarized available guidance documents from various fields of application and elaborated on the systematic review process by breaking it down into ten steps, starting with planning the project, framing the question, writing and publishing the protocol, concluding with data integration, interpretation and reporting. The group also has highlighted the specific methodological challenges of toxicological questions and have summarized how these can be addressed. This primer is intended to stimulate scientific discussions of the identified issues to fuel the development of toxicology-specific methodology and to encourage the application of systematic review methodology to risk assessment. The article is published open-access and can be downloaded directly from the publisher here.