The relationship between physical activity and mental health, especially depression, is one of the most studied topics in the field of exercise science and kinesiology. Although there is strong consensus that regular physical activity improves mental health and reduces depressive symptoms, some debate the mechanisms involved in this relationship as well as the limitations and definitions used in such studies. Meta-analyses and systematic reviews continue to examine the strength of the association between physical activity and depressive symptoms for the purpose of improving exercise prescription as treatment or combined treatment for depression. This dataset covers 27 review articles (either systematic review, meta-analysis, or both) and 365 primary study articles addressing the relationship between physical activity and depressive symptoms. Primary study articles are manually extracted from the review articles. We used a custom-made workflow (Fu, Yuanxi. (2022). Scopus author info tool (1.0.1) [Python]. https://github.com/infoqualitylab/Scopus_author_info_collection that uses the Scopus API and manual work to extract and disambiguate authorship information for the 392 reports. The author information file (author_list.csv) is the product of this workflow and can be used to compute the co-author network of the 392 articles. This dataset can be used to construct the inclusion network and the co-author network of the 27 review articles and 365 primary study articles. A primary study article is "included" in a review article if it is considered in the review article's evidence synthesis. Each included primary study article is cited in the review article, but not all references cited in a review article are included in the evidence synthesis or primary study articles. The inclusion network is a bipartite network with two types of nodes: one type represents review articles, and the other represents primary study articles. In an inclusion network, if a review article includes a primary study article, there is a directed edge from the review article node to the primary study article node. The attribute file (article_list.csv) includes attributes of the 392 articles, and the edge list file (inclusion_net_edges.csv) contains the edge list of the inclusion network. Collectively, this dataset reflects the evidence production and use patterns within the exercise science and kinesiology scientific community, investigating the relationship between physical activity and depressive symptoms. FILE FORMATS 1. article_list.csv - Unicode CSV 2. author_list.csv - Unicode CSV 3. Chinese_author_name_reference.csv - Unicode CSV 4. inclusion_net_edges.csv - Unicode CSV 5. review_article_details.csv - Unicode CSV 6. supplementary_reference_list.pdf - PDF 7. README.txt - text file 8. systematic_review_inclusion_criteria.csv - Unicode CSV UPDATES IN THIS VERSION COMPARED TO V3 (Clarke, Caitlin; Lischwe Mueller, Natalie; Joshi, Manasi Ballal; Fu, Yuanxi; Schneider, Jodi (2023): The Inclusion Network of 27 Review Articles Published between 2013-2018 Investigating the Relationship Between Physical Activity and Depressive Symptoms. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. https://doi.org/10.13012/B2IDB-4614455_V3) - We added a new file systematic_review_inclusion_criteria.csv.