The scoping review will include studies involving adult participants aged 18 years and older, diagnosed with any form of cancer (regardless of severity), who have received prescribed exercise as part of their treatment at any point from diagnosis to completion of primary (first line) cancer treatment. Studies involving individuals of mixed age groups will be included only if data on adults can be reported independently.

All interventions in which exercises were prescribed and administered to mitigate cancer-related and cancer treatment-induced symptoms in line with the eligibility criteria will be included. Specifically, the authors will consider any reference to aerobic, strengthening, dancing, flexibility and balance exercises in which exercise intensity, frequency or duration have been explicitly described as part of the rehabilitation and treatment of the above-mentioned population at any stage of care (i.e. from diagnosis before the commencement of treatment, during any of the primary interventions, as well as post-treatment in partial or complete remission). Physical activities categorised as mind-body exercises such as Pilates, yoga and Tai Chi, if structured, will also be included.

The scoping review will consider all contexts, that is studies that have included exercises performed in all settings of care (in-hospital, outpatient, private, and public or community settings). Exercise interventions provided in laboratory settings or under free-living conditions in all geographic locations will be considered.

Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods study designs will be included in the scoping review. Systematic reviews meeting the inclusion criteria will also be considered. While expert opinions will be considered for inclusion, newspaper articles, editorials, and other forms of popular media as well as unpublished dissertations and theses will not be used.

With the assistance of an information scientist, suitable electronic databases were identified, which will be searched for relevant articles to be included in the full review. The search strategy was developed in line with the set inclusion criteria. It aims to locate all published studies related to the topic and was reviewed and refined by the authors and information scientist.

The following terms were included in the given combination to create relevant search strings for the review:

An initial limited search of MEDLINE (PubMed), CINAHL, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and JBI Evidence Synthesis was undertaken to identify articles on the topic. Based on this preliminary search, no current or ongoing systematic or scoping reviews on our topic were identified. The text words contained in the titles and abstracts of the identified relevant articles, as well as the keywords and index terms used to describe the articles, were used to develop the full search strategy that will be undertaken across all included databases. The initial search terms and the records retrieved are listed in the preliminary search strategy for MEDLINE (PubMed) (see Appendix 1).

Relevant published studies, only in English, will be searched (for the full review) from 01 January 2011 to 31 December 2021, using 15 electronic databases (Academic Search Ultimate, Africa-Wide Information, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, CAB Abstracts, CINAHL with full text, Communication & Mass Media Complete, ERIC, GreenFILE, Health Source – Consumer Edition, Health Source – Nursing/Academic Edition, Humanities Source Ultimate, MEDLINE, Sociology Search Ultimate and SPORTDiscus with Full Text), alongside reference checking. Only full-text articles available from University of the Free State (UFS) library on exercise-based interventions in adult cancer patients during any of the cancer treatment phases will be included. Although language limitations can bias review conclusions, the authors have selected a search period (2011–2021) during which enormous growth in exercise oncology research has occurred (after exercise guidelines for cancer patients were published [Schmitz et al. 2010] and later modified [Campbell et al. 2019]). In addition, there is, currently, more research on exercise involving individuals with cancer types besides breast and PCa.

At the completion of the search, all identified records (articles) will be exported to the reference manager Mendeley (Mendeley Ltd., Elsevier, Netherlands) and duplicates will be removed. Two independent reviewers (J.M.N. and A.v.d.M.) will screen the titles and abstracts for assessment in congruence with the inclusion criteria for the review. If there is any doubt as to whether an article(s) should be included at this stage, a consensus meeting will be convened among members of the review team to identify whether the article(s) in question should be included for further evaluation. Thereafter, the full texts of potentially relevant articles will be obtained and reviewed for final inclusion against the inclusion criteria by the two reviewers. To resolve doubt regarding the inclusion of any full-length article, another consensus meeting will be convened among the review team to make a final decision on the eligibility of the study. The specific reasons for excluding full-length articles that are not in line with the eligibility criteria will be documented in the final scoping review. The reference lists of all included sources of evidence will be screened for additional studies that might not have been identified during the search. A study record table created in Excel will be used throughout the screening phase to keep track of all information regarding the articles and the decisions made.

Data will be extracted from full-text articles screened according to the identified data extraction points (specific details related to the objective of our review). A data extraction table (see Appendix 2) was developed via discussion by members of the review team and piloted using two selected articles. Data from the two studies were extracted and entered into the extraction table, then modified, where necessary, following pre-testing. The data extraction table may be modified and further refined as the full review progresses to capture other pertinent data. This will ensure that the required information is captured sufficiently and correctly. Any adjustments made to the instrument (extraction table) will be detailed in the full scoping review. The two reviewers will independently extract and chart the data in the extraction table. Once the data are extracted, the reviewers (J.M.N. and A.v.d.M.) will meet and compare the completed tables and correct mistakes. Inter-reviewer discrepancies will be resolved through discussion or by the involvement of a third reviewer (R.B.), who will also check the extracted data for accuracy.

The results of the search and the inclusion criteria will be displayed, in the full review, using tables and diagrams, with a supporting narrative summarising the extracted information in line with the review objectives and the variables extracted. The results will be reported in full in the final scoping review and presented in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses extension for scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) checklist (Tricco et al. 2018).