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Systematic and Other Reviews: Search strategies

This guide contains information about systematic reviews and links to resources to help you conduct one.

Designing a search

 

Before translating your search across appropriate databases for your systematic review it is important to build a comprehensive and systematic search strategy. 

 

If you would like some more training on searching (particularly in health databases!), we recommend enrolling in the following Library module on ResHub: 

There aren't any rules for how many results need to be found - there isn't an ideal number. If you feel like you are seeing too many or too few, here are some tips for troubleshooting your search:

PRESS Checklist

 

The Cochrane Handbook recommends reviewing your search strategy using the PRESS Checklist as it provides a shortlist of criteria to assess that your search is complete.

It is a good idea to assess your search before you move on to translating your search as it can help you pick up critical errors. The table below is an abbreviated version of the checklist however the full version is linked below.

Recommendation

Guidance

Assess whether the research question has been correctly translated into search concepts.

  • Does the search strategy contain concepts which reflect the research question?

Assess whether the elements addressing the search question have been correctly combined with Boolean and/or proximity operators.

  • Are all synonyms combined with OR, with no errors?

  • Are concept groups combined with AND?

  • Has use of NOT been justified?

  • Are there any proximity operators that can be used to increase recall and precision?

Assess whether subject headings (if applicable to the database) have been used correctly.

  • Are the included subject headings relevant to the topic? (check the scope notes)

  • Have any narrower terms been included? (use of 'explosion')

  • Are there any missing subject headings (check indexing of key papers)

Assess whether keywords are adequate to cover your topic

  • Has each concept been accurately described using keywords?

  • Have all applicable alternative terms been included?

  • Are the keywords used on topic? (not too narrow, not too broad but are relevant)

Assess correct use of spelling, correct use of syntax and correct search implementation.

Review the search strategy for misspelled words and for errors in system syntax that are not easily found by spell checking.

Check each line number and combinations of line numbers to ensure that the search logic was correctly implemented.

Limits and filters: Assess whether the limits used (including filters) are appropriate and have been applied correctly.

Review the search strategy to see if limits that are not relevant to the eligible study designs or to the clinical question have been applied, as these could potentially introduce bias.

Translating a search 

 

Authors of a systematic review are expected to search for evidence across multiple databases. Once you have developed a search strategy you will need to translate the strategy across the databases you highlighted in your Protocol. Translation of your search strategy is necessary as not all databases use the same syntax and therefore it will need to be adjusted. 

The video below is a snippet from the Systematic Review workshop on ‘translating’ a search strategy into a query for a database.

Use the search shortcuts guide below to view the shortcuts used across the most popular databases used for Systematic Reviews. 

It may be useful to track your searches across different databases in a search log. Here is one example of how you could set this up:

Reporting your search

 

You need to write up your search so readers understand what steps you took to locate all relevant evidence. This is also an important part of making sure your review is transparent and reproducible. This section provides resources and examples to assist with this.

  • Provide the full version of each of your database searches either in the appendix or as a supplementary file