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Systematic Reviews

A guide for researchers undertaking a systematic review

Searching for studies

When keyword searching you may wish to include database syntax to help you formulate your search for more complex queries. For example:

Type Definition Example
Truncation symbols Allow you to search the root of a word, with any ending. Austral* = Australia, Australian, Australasian
Wildcards Use within words to search for alternate spellings or word forms. colo#r = color or colour
wom#n = woman or women
Adjacency operators Find keywords within a certain number of words of each other. mental adj5 health = finds the words 'mental' and 'health' within 5 words of each other. For example, this would find articles with the phrase "mental and emotional health"
Post-qualifiers Search for keywords in only certain fields of the record. education.ti,ab = searching the title and abstract fields only for the word education

IMPORTANT: Always check the Help menu of the database you are using to check the syntax of that particular database.

This Database Syntax Cheat Sheet will assist you to translate your search across databases.

The Polyglot search translator tool automatically translates database syntax from a Medline (Ovid) or PubMed search strategy to other resources. NB this does not translate subject headings.

SearchRxiv is a search archive that supports sharing and re-use of existing searches.

 

You might also be interested to read the following paper on this topic, co-authored by one of our UWA Librarians. 

Solomons, T., & Hinton, E. (2021). Federated searches: why a one-stop shop approach to literature searching falls short for evidence synthesis. JBI Evidence Synthesis, 19(6), 1259-1262. 

Text mining tools

Text mining tools can assist you to establish appropriate keywords and subject headings for your topic, visit the text mining and data mining guide for further information. The Systematic Review Accelerator (SRA) is free software developed at Bond University which can help translate a Medline/PubMed search strategy to other major databases.

Use Boolean to combine search terms

You can use the Boolean AND and OR to combine your keywords:

AND - use to combine keywords for different concepts e.g. diet AND exercise AND obesity
OR - use to combine keyword synonyms e.g. diet OR nutrition

Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3
(diet OR nutrition OR "healthy eating")        AND (exercise OR "physical activity" )       AND (obesity OR overweight)

Search filters

Validated search filters (sometimes called hedges) have been developed by expert searchers as a method of most effectively searching for a particular topic or set of results in a particular database.

Validated search filters take the work out of developing your own search strategy. Sources of search filters include:

 

There are various search builder tools that can assist with the search process.

  • The Systematic Review Accelerator (SR-Accelerator is a suite of tools developed by the Bond University to speed up steps in the Systematic Review (SR) process. They have made it freely available for anyone to use. 
  • The Systematic Review Toolbox - a community-driven and searchable catalogue of tools that support the systematic review process across multiple domains. 

There are free browser plug-ins that may help you find the full text pdf from Open Access (OA) sources. Download the internet browser extensions from your app store.

  • LibKey: integrates with our UWA library subscriptions as well as other OA online sources
  • EndNote click: integrates with our UWA library subscriptions as well as other OA online sources.
  • Unpaywall: harvests open access online content from publishers and repositories

 

Webinar : Systematic review searching Ovid Medline

This webinar recording provides a demonstration of developing a search strategy in the Ovid Medline database for health-related reviews. It covers how to:

  • Find seed references from which keywords and Mesh Subject Headings are harvested into a Search Planner Concept Table to then create a search strategy
  • Proximity search operator ADJ
  • Editing and saving search strategies online
  • Testing that the search strategy captures seed references
  • Reporting search strategy so it is transparent & reproducible
  • Tips for increasing/decreasing search results


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Keeping current

Once you have conducted your initial searches, you will need to continue to monitor new studies being published. These may not be included in the systematic review once you have started the process of data analysis, but you should be aware of any developments.

A Search Alert notifies you of new articles that match a search you have saved. This can alert you to new articles in a given subject area, by a certain author, or containing specific keywords. 

You will need to register with a database to receive alerts.

Examples of databases that offer search alerts include:

All databases will have a similar functionality which allows you to set up an alert usually from the search results page.

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 Except for logos, Canva designs, AI generated images or where otherwise indicated, content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.