Evidence Synthesis: Resources

Build you search terms by:

• Listing keywords you are already familiar with through your own knowledge and experience
• Scanning articles already found through preliminary searches (frequency of terms and controlled vocabulary (Thesaurus, MeSH, Subject Headings)
• What research has already been done?
• Looking for authors publishing in the area or journals associated with the subject area
• Check MIAR (Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals) to find out in which databases, journals are indexed in and which also includes sources for journal rankings and open access policies
• Using online free text mining tools such as PubmedReminer and YaleMeSH Analyser  to help to determine search terms to check for the frequency of phrases and words

For each concept, think about:

• Spelling variations: (European, American, common misspellings - color, colour)
• Synonyms
• Abbreviations or acronyms
• Former or alternative terms
• Plurals
• Specific index terms in databases (Cinahl - Subject Headings, Medline - MeSH, Thesaurus - PsycINFO)
• Truncation / Wildcard symbols - check the help area in databases.

Building Search Terms.

Documenting the final search strategy:

For each database, record the following:

• The database
• Date of the search
• Platform provider (EBSCO, Ovid, Proquest, Elsevier)
• Time period
• Keywords used
• Limiters / Filters applied
• Number of studies discovered

Similarly, list other resources such as grey literature, repositories.

Translating searches across databases and platforms.

Choosing the best synthesis (review) type for your research question.