Scoping Reviews for Health Sciences and Medicine

Searching databases

Which databases?

The databases you search will depend on your research question. As a general rule, it is recommend to at least include Medline and Embase which are both available on the Ovid platform.

Specialised databases

If your question is related to:
 

See subject specific LibGuides for further database recommendations
 

Keywords, synonyms

Tips

• Brainstorm keywords and test these individually in a major database
• Run the strategy on the primary database and examine the first 50 records carefully to identify the terms you included.
• Try and identify major sources of irrelevant records and adjust the search strategy accordingly.  
• Test any acronyms as these may have many meanings in different subject areas.

Subject Headings

Most databases offer a thesaurus or list of available subject headings that can be allocated to an article by the author or indexer.

Use of the preferred term is a powerful and controlled way of directly accessing most if not all of the material within a field of study. The lists of preferred terms in Medline (MeSH), Embase (Emtree) and Psycinfo are particularly extensive. Each is a hierarchical arrangement of broader terms, preferred and related terms, and narrower terms, designed to map the context and content of their respective fields. 

In the OVID versions of Medline, Embase and Psycinfo the Search Tools feature offers a Map Term function for looking up the preferred term(s) for a given topic.

Proximity Searching

Boolean searching looks for the presence or absence of words in the fields of a record, or the text of a document.

Proximity searching allows better control of the relevance of concepts by adjusting their proximity to one another. If the concepts occur close together in a sentence or paragraph, the topics are more likely to be relevant than if they are widely separated.

Most database platforms offer proximity operators to specify word order and separation.  Check the help system of the database you are using and look for proximity to find information on how to apply it correctly.

Replace # with the maximum number of words to occur between the two concepts.

Want to learn more about searching?

The Systematic Searching for Health and Medicine tutorial is a self-paced resource that will step you through the process of developing a search strategy from research question to exporting search results
University of Melbourne Staff and Students only

Supplementary Searching

The following are citation databases that allow backwards and forwards citation chaining.

Web of Science

Scopus

Searching grey literature
 

Grey literature is "Information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." CGL Luxembourg definition, 1997-expanded in New York, 2004.

When conducting a scoping review, it is important to include grey literature in your search strategy to ensure that you are capturing all relevant information. The Cochrane, JBI, and PRISMA guidelines highly recommend or mandate searching for grey literature as part of the review process.

JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis

The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Reviewer's Manual provides guidance on conducting systematic reviews and other types of evidence syntheses, and emphasises the importance of searching for grey literature to identify unpublished and hard-to-find studies.

See:

• Aromataris E, Munn Z (Editors). JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis. JBI, 2020. Full Text
  See search strategy notes for Scoping Reviews

PRISMA

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines provide a framework for reporting systematic reviews and include a checklist item that calls for reporting the search strategy used for grey literature.

See: PRISMA for Scoping Reviews

Where to find Grey Literature

The Grey Literature for Health Sciences and Medicine LibGuide provides information and resources to assist with searching for a wide range of Grey Literature types.
 

Want to learn more about Grey Literature?

Enrol in the self-paced Finding Grey Literature Tutorial (Canvas) and step through the modules explaining the different types of grey literature and how to find them.
University of Melbourne Staff and Students only

Search Translation - Steps to follow

Each database service has it's own set of rules for entering queries and moving from one to another can be quite daunting.  Follow these steps to transition from one to another.

OR terms 

Keep these lines the same across systems if possible.  Check each line with an AND search of a  single key term to see whether the result set is affected by the content of the database and some terms won't work well with the database.  Put OR commands in uppercase and phrases in quotation marks (e.g. phototherapy OR "light therapy")
 

Subject Headings

For specific subject headings or groups of subject headings (exploded subject headings) check the terms using any subject mapping tool in the service to see what equivalent terms are used.  If nothing is suitable, consider using the term as a keyword instead.   Check the result set returned by any exploded subject headings.  Different systems can have major differences between what is included in a specific subject heading group which can play havoc with result numbers.  If using the Embase database consider if you need every mention of the term.  If not, use the major subject heading term by adding an asterisk before the term (e.g. *phototherapy/).  Embase in particular adds a lot of indexing terms and can over-saturate your search strategy with minor subject headings. 
 

Proximity

If using proximity searches, read the details in the database help about how the system does proximity search.  Each system is different and some systems will not be able to repeat some searches.
 

Line Combinations / AND terms

Combine your search lines using whatever option for this exists on the system.  Each system has their own way of doing this and it is easiest to use check-boxes and "Combine Sets" options than trying to work out the right way to write it in the search box.
 

Limits

Leave your limits to last.  Not every item in any database is fully indexed so take care when applying limits that your search results are not significantly lower than you expect.  Consider doing a NOT search between the result before the limit is applied and after the limit is applied.  This will create a set of excluded items and can be checked to see if the database has consistently applied the limit to all records.  Generally, language and year limits are fine.  Limits on publication type, experimental design, human/animal studies, clinical trials, discipline field and other areas can be less consistently applied to all items in the database and can affect the final result of your review.

Ebsco Databases = CINAHL, ERIC, SocINDEX, SPORTDiscus
Ovid Databases = Medline, Embase, Emcare, PsycINFO