LibGuides: Systematic Reviews: Systematic Searching

Introduction to conducting a Systematic Review

Cochrane Introduction to conducting a Systematic Review
Part of the Cochrane Interactive Learning course on Conducting an Intervention Review, this module introduces you to what systematic reviews are and why they are useful. This module describes the various types and preferred format of review questions, and outlines the process of conducting systematic reviews.
Campbell Systematic Reviews
The Campbell Collaboration is an international social science research network that produces high quality, open and policy-relevant evidence syntheses, plain language summaries and policy briefs.

A Systematic Approach to Searching

A methodology for planning and creating a multi-database search strategy consists of the following steps:

Determine a clear and focused question
Describe the articles that can answer the question
Decide which key concepts address the different elements of the question
Decide which elements should be used for the best results
Choose an appropriate database and interface to start with
Document the search process in a text document
Identify appropriate index terms in the thesaurus of the first database
Identify synonyms in the thesaurus
Add variations in search terms
Use database-appropriate syntax, with parentheses, Boolean operators, and field codes
Optimize the search
Evaluate the initial results
Check for errors
Translate to other databases
Test and reiterate

Bramer, W. M., de Jonge, G. B., Rethlefsen, M. L., Mast, F., & Kleijnen, J. (2018). A systematic approach to searching: an efficient and complete method to develop literature searches. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA, 106(4), 531–541. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2018.283

Systematic Review Tutorial

Preparing a Systematic Search

Preparing for a Systematic Search Tutorial
This video demonstrates a number of tasks reviewers usually do before performing a full-scale systematic search. For example, a preliminary search is usually conducted to find out if anyone else has done a review on the topic before. Reviewers also do "scoping" searches or "pearl-growing" searches to better understand existing primary studies on the topic. These techniques also help develop a list of search terms that can be used in the full-scale search. Finally this video gives examples of online databases, which reviewers may search depending on the subjects of their topics.

Systematic Searching Tutorial

Systematic Searching
In this lesson, you’ll learn about how to search systematically for information that you might need for research, for a literature review, publication, or report.