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Scoping Reviews for Health Sciences and Medicine

An introduction to Scoping Reviews, with examples from Health Sciences and Medicine

Managing Results

Save your search in a database account

We recommend saving your current strategy to your database account.

Database providers offer the option of creating a personal account:

  • In Ovid databases such as Medline, select My Account
  • In EBSCOHost databases such as CINAHL select Sign In
  • In Proquest databases such as Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global select Sign into My research
  • In  Web of Science select Register or Sign In

Once signed in you can save a search strategy to rerun at a later date, or set the frequency of automatic updates.

 

 

Documenting and reporting searches

It is important to document the search strategy and processes involved  for scoping reviews.

PRISMA-ScR provides details of the details that need to be recorded/reported for information sources and searching.

The information required in the documentation may include:

  • Who conducted the search
  • Date the search/es were conducted
  • Sources searched
  • Search strategies as conducted in databases and websites (copy and paste as is, including names of databases and platform)
  • Record the number of results from each source
  • Include in PRISMA Flow Diagram.

 

Reporting on the Search Strategy

Include:

  • Keywords and Subject Headings used.
  • Any limits/filters applied  ie. language or publication date
  • Present the full search strategy for at least one database
  • Record the number of results from each source - include in PRISMA Flow Diagra
  • This will continue in the screeining stage where the numbers of excluded results will need to be recorded.

 

Export Search Results

 

Endnote

Create a new Endnote library for the Scoping Review.

Create a 'group' for each database you will search

Export results from each database and drag the imported references to the appropriate folder. This will assist in reporting the number of results from each database and also keeping track if you ever need to walk back a step.

Duplicates can be removed by Covidence when imported into the screening stage.

Once all the records have been imported into the Endnote library from all the different sources, it may then be

 

Covidence

If you will be using Covidence for the screening process, duplicates will be removed automatically when you import into Covidence