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Systematic literature searching Systematic literature searching is an advanced, structured process and a consistent approach is important.
The search will need to be thorough, using relevant keywords, Boolean operators and advanced searching techniques.
The whole process (including the search strategy itself) will usually need to be documented, so that it could be repeated by someone else. Therefore, when planning, it is helpful to keep a record of which databases you have searched, the terms which were used and some notes about what terms did and didn’t produce good results. There are some templates below which could help with this.
Your subject guide will point you towards the most appropriate databases to search for your subject area. You won’t need to use all of them, but, you will usually need to use at least two or three. Which ones and how many will depend on your specific question and assessment.
The video and slides below provides an introduction of how to carry out a literature search using Discovery. The search terms used are based on a health topic. It goes through 4 main steps to finding information:
The video and slides below show how to do an advanced systematic literature search in the CINAHL and Medline databases. The search terms used are based on a health research topic. It goes through 9 key steps to finding information:
The written guidance and short video tutorial below show how to use Boolean operators and advanced searching techniques in a subject database available on the EBSCOhost platform.
You can access the EBSCOhost health databases by clicking on the links below.
The recent activity screen is where you can combine search terms and phrases.
You can access 'Recent activity' from the 'My dashboard' menu.
Recent activity shows which search terms you have used during the current session.
To combine search terms using 'Recent activity', you must first search for the keywords or phrases you want to combine.
Once you have searched for some keywords, you can combine them with Boolean operators in the 'Recent activity' screen.
Tick the boxes next to the terms you want to combine. Then click on the appropriate Boolean operator button to combine the search terms.
See the video and text document below for more information about how to search using 'Recent activity'.
Subject headings (also known as subject terms) are a list of words or phrases that use controlled vocabulary to describe specific concepts. The headings are then added onto the records within the databases.
Not all databases use subject headings and the terminology used can differ for each database and platform.
CINAHL uses CINAHL Headings and Medline uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) which is the NLM (National Library of Medicine) controlled vocabulary thesaurus. Embase uses Emtree indexing which is Elsevier’s authoritative life science thesaurus.
Used in conjunction with keywords subject headings can help you retrieve all the relevant articles on a topic. They can also be helpful for searching for ambiguous concepts. For example a keyword search for running might find research on aerobic running or on the running a service. Using a subject heading would allow you to choose the correct context for a word/phrase.
Using subject headings is not compulsory and the databases that do offer this functionality differ with their vocabulary. Not all concepts in a database have a subject heading assigned to them and there can be some delay in adding the subject terms to records. Newly added references may not have subject terms assigned to them, so if you are searching with subject headings alone, those references may not come back in your search results.
If you do decide to use subject headings, it is usually best to do your searches in the databases one at a time as the indexes are different. You would then combine the headings with the other relevant keywords for the topic using the appropriate Boolean operators.
The short video tutorial below shows how to use Boolean operators, advanced search techniques and filters in the database Embase.
You can access the database by clicking on the link below.
The short video tutorial below shows how to use Boolean operators, advanced search techniques and filters in the database Maternity and Infant Care.
You can access the database by clicking on the link below.
The short video tutorial below shows how to use Boolean operators, advanced search techniques and filters in the database Scopus.
You can access the database by clicking on the link below.
Medline (available via EBSCOhost) will cover a lot of the content within PubMed and offers the ability to do a more focused/structured search. It is also one of the main databases used in Systematic reviews. However, although both databases are very similar and will have a lot of duplicated content, there are some differences to be aware of, before you make your decision about whether to search them both or not.
PubMed is an interface used to search Medline but it does also have some additional biomedical content. PubMed citations come from:
1) MEDLINE indexed journals:
2) journals/manuscripts deposited in PMC
3) NCBI Bookshelf.
If you limit your PubMed search to MeSH controlled vocabulary or the MEDLINE subset, you will see only MEDLINE citations in your results.
More information is available here: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/difference.html
PEDro is a free database of randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy.
The guide below shows how to use Boolean operators and search techniques in this database and how to view the results.
This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Deed.
