Evidence Synthesis, Systematic Review Services : Manage Your Search Process

You will want to keep notes on your literature search process. Think of these notes as similar to the lab or field notes you record as you research.  It is a record of your thought process as you develop a search strategy and perform exploratory literature searches.

Word/GoogleDocs or Excel/GoogleSheets can be used for this process. (These documents will not be the space or the tools you will use to store your final search results or to select the articles for analysis based on inclusion/exclusion criteria).

You will want to record your early planning and brainstorming:

• Citations of known literature that you are using as keyword inspiration
• Keywords and filters that you think will be useful to use as search terms
• Databases and other tools you will use to discover literature
• Your research question in a PICO or other framework and a brief narrative about the bigger picture to your question

As you construct and execute searches you will want to record:

• The exact search string used (keywords, filters & limits)
• Date the search was run
• The database the search was run through
• How many results you got
• Notes and observations about the results as you scan through titles

Example spreadsheet template

"Documenting Your Systematic Review Searches with Excel" (video), University of Alabama Libraries

See also "Templates and Trackers" from the companion site to the text Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review by Andrew Booth, Anthea Sutton, Mark Clowes, and Marrissa Martyn-St.James.

Once you have generated a search strategy and have translated it, as necessary, for each database you will be searching, you will:

• Run the search in each database.
• Export the results (citations and abstracts only) using the exporting choices of the database and/or as mediated by your citation manager (BibTeX, RIS, or XML...) and save files.
  • Note that you may need to export results in smaller sets given restrictions of the database.
• Import files into your citation manager using its feature to do so .

Look for a link or tab from within the database. Your search history shows each step you have taken to get to a set of records. Copy and paste your history into a document for your notes. Having your search history and search expression/syntax will be helpful when writing your methodology and for when you want to run a search again or to run the search in another database.

The databases to which the libraries subscribe permit you to create your own login to customize your experience. With login and profile, you will be able to save searches, choose to re-run them, or to automate them so that you receive an email alert as new records are added to the database that match your search.