LibGuides: How To Conduct A Systematic Review: The Search

The Search

The research team will:

Decide whether to search Medline through PubMed or Ebsco
Select which journal article databases are relevant to their research topic
Identify types of grey literature that are relevant to their topic
Decide if hand searching will improve their search strategy and what sources are appropriate for this method

Note: the search should be repeated before the final analysis in order to capture literature that was published since the initial search. This helps to create an up-to-date systematic review that includes the most recent literature available.

Databases To Search

Databases index journals and no single database includes all journals in a particular subject area. PubMed is a common starting point for health sciences reviews. You should use other database in addition to PubMed. Some of the more common databases are listed below. Check the A-Z list of databases for a complete list.

Access Medicine
AccessMedicine provides medical students with a variety of resources including texts, images, videos and USMLE formatted questions.
Access Pharmacy
Test yourself with practice questions The Study Tools menu contains a NAPLEX Review option. You will need to create a free MyAccess account to access the review questions.
Embase
An international database of 28+ million citations including biomedical and pharmaceutical journal articles and conferences papers..Similar to PubMed; includes conference proceedings and more European journals.
SAGE
Full-text content from books, academic and research journals, and reference resources.
Scopus
Database with coverage of all sciences. Good for questions about medical devices and technology.
CINAHL
Nursing and allied health literature. Good for questions about patient care, preferences, and behaviors
LILACS
Scientific and technical literature by Latin America and Caribbean authors.
Epistemonikos
Provides rapid access to systematic reviews in health and primary studies that have been included in a systematic review.
CARDS-Computer Access to Research on Dietary Supplements
Database of federally funded research projects pertaining to dietary supplements since 1999.
PubMed Clinical Queries
Evidence Based Medicine and Systematic Review quick search to find answers to clinical questions.

Grey Literature

The term grey literature refers to all information that isn't commercially published. This can include the following types of documents:

Conference proceedings, abstracts, papers, posters, presentations, etc.
Clinical trials
Theses and dissertations
Regulatory documentation
Government reports
Grant proposals and applications
Social media posts

Including grey literature in a systematic review can strengthen the overall product by minimizing publication bias. Although grey literature is rarely peer reviewed, all sources of information should undergo assessment before being included in the final analysis.

Use Google to search for conferences and determine if posters and presentations are available.

Please refer to our Grey Literature guide for more information:

Clinical Trials
The result of a government mandate requiring clinical trials to register with the US government regardless of their intent to publish results. Including ClinicalTrials.gov in your search strategy can potentially strengthen a systematic review by including data not found in the published literature.

Hand Searching

Hand searching refers to reading through specific journal table of contents and selecting articles relevant to the research topic. This is an additional search strategy that can be used to capture literature that may have been missed by searching a journal article database.

Finding Full Journal titles from abbreviated titles

While viewing an abstract in PubMed, hover your mouse over the journal abbreviation to view the full title.