Having completed the scoping process in Step 1 Formulate your question and Identified to where to search in Step 4 you are now ready to start planning your search in more detail. At this stage you will need to decide how you are going to search. The search strategy that you will develop will form an important part of your systematic review and needs to be clear and methodical so that it can be replicated in the future. Watch the video on how to create a search strategy and read through the information provided below. Next download the Full Search Planner Example and then create your own detailed search plan (to do this you need to complete the next section on your search planner that you saved in step 1)
Creating a successful search strategy
Full search planner
- Full Search Plan ExampleAn example of what a full search plan could look like. Please look at this before filling in 'the developing your search strategy section' of your own search planner.
Database help
Use this workbook and watch the video to get to grips with this controlled vocabulary database.
Remember when doing a Systematic Review you would not normally use the Focus function.
When limiting to Humans, avoid missing any untagged articles by using the following recommended by The Cochrane Handbook:
- Search for: exp animals/ not humans.sh. (simply copy and paste this into the search box)
- NOT this search with your combined search results (you will need to type in NOT as this doesn't appear as a Combine option on the Ovid platform.
Use this workbook and watch the video to get to grips with this controlled vocabulary database.
Remember when doing a Systematic Review you would not normally use the Focus function.
When limiting to Humans, avoid missing any untagged articles by using the following recommended by The Cochrane Handbook:
- Search for: exp animals/ not humans.sh. (simply copy and paste this into the search box)
- NOT this search with your combined search results (you will need to type in NOT as this doesn't appear as a Combine option on the Ovid platform.
Use this workbook and watch the video to get to grips with the controlled vocabulary database.
Remember when doing a Systematic Review you would not normally use the Focus function.
Use this workbook and watch the video to get to grips with this controlled vocabulary database.
Use this workbook and watch the videos to get to grips with this controlled vocabulary database.
- ERIC via EBSCO workbookA workbook showing you how to search Education Resources Information Centre database via EBSCO interface
Use this workbook and watch the videos to get to grips with this controlled vocabulary database.
- LLBA workbookA workbook showing you how to search the Linguistic Language Behavioural Abstracts database
Use this workbook and watch the video to get to grips with this keyword database.
Use this workbook and watch the video to get to grips with this keyword database.
Explore the Clarivate page for more Web of Science videos covering topics such as: Build better searches, Combining searches in Web of Science and How to do a cited reference search.
This video gives you a brief overview of what Business Source Complete is and what kind of material you would expect to find on this database. It does NOT give you a detailed breakdown of how to undertake a systematic review search in the database.
- The Cochrane Library WorkbookA workbook showing how to search the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)