Once you have a clearly defined research question, you will want to search other reviews on your topic. Finding existing reviews
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Updated monthly. Indexes and abstracts over 1,700 sources, including international material selected from periodicals written in over 35 languages. Contains current chapter and book coverage with worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present, and adds over 60,000 references annually through monthly updates. Covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines.
Has over 1.8 million individual records, some dating back to 1887.
You can search for systematic reviews in PsycINFO in one of two ways.
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In addition to full-text journals, SocINDEX with Full Text contains informative abstracts for core coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. Includes indexing for books, monographs, conference papers and other non-periodical content sources.
In SocINDEX, you cannot easily limit your searches by methodology, so you'll need to use keyword searches to find review articles.
Start by adding the keywords for your topic, then add an additional line of terms to capture reviews... “systematic review*” OR "research synthesis" OR "synthesis of research" OR "meta analysis" OR "meta-analysis"
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Updated monthly. Provides a digital library of education-related resources. Contains over 1.1 million citations covering research documents, journal articles, technical reports, program descriptions and evaluations, and curricular materials in the field of education.
Also includes more than 107,000 full text non-journal documents indexed by the ERIC database. Approximately one-half of the entries in the ERIC database are to ERIC documents. Microfiche copies of ERIC documents, including those prior to 1996, are in the Collections Deposit Library (CDL) Microforms Collection at MCFICHE 4913.
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The collection includes full text for more than 1,700 journals, 550 books and monographs, education-related conference papers, citations for over 4 million articles including book reviews and over 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests. Coverage in Education Source spans all levels of education from early childhood to higher education and also includes educational specialties such as multilingual education, health education and testing.
In Education Source and ERIC, you cannot easily limit your searches by methodology, so you'll need to use keyword searches to find review articles.
Start by adding the keywords for your topic, then add an additional line of terms to capture reviews... “systematic review*” OR "research synthesis" OR "synthesis of research" OR "meta analysis" OR "meta-analysis"
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Updated monthly. Provides bibliographic indexing from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. Contains bibliographic citations (e.g., authors, title, and journal reference) and author abstracts from 4,500 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 foreign countries.
Journal articles are indexed for MEDLINE using NLM's controlled vocabulary, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Citations are created by the National Library of Medicine, International MEDLARS partners, and cooperating professional organizations.
MEDLINE has worldwide coverage, but 88% of the citations in current MEDLINE are to English-language sources and 76% have English abstracts.
NLM provides free access to MEDLINE through PubMed.
You can search for reviews in Medline in two ways...
1) Under the "Publication Type" limit, select both "Meta analysis" and "Review"
2) Include Systematic Review as a search term. To be thorough, use a search phrase like...“systematic review*” OR "research synthesis" OR "synthesis of research" OR "meta analysis" OR "meta-analysis"
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Updated monthly. The Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health (CINAHL) database provides authoritative coverage of the literature related to nursing and allied health disciplines. Includes indexing for more than 5,100 journals with coverage as far back as 1937 and full text coverage for more than 700 journals. In addition to journals, includes healthcare books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of professional practice, and educational software.
You can search for systematic reviews in CINAHL in one of two ways.
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Updated weekly. Provides access to over 36 million citations in MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, and other related databases. Links to the full text articles are provided when available, subject to UT subscription status.
Set up LibKey Nomad to find access through the UT Libraries subscriptions and purchases.
Start by entering your search terms in the basic search. On the results page, limit by Article Types with Meta-Analysis and Systematic reviews. Make sure you click to activate the filters after choosing them from and closing the pop-up box.
Click Advanced Search. Type in your search terms, and make sure "Review" is checked.
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Updated quarterly. Includes reliable and up-to-date information on the effects of interventions in health care. Provides information and evidence to support decisions taken in health care and to inform those receiving care. Consists of a regularly updated collection of evidence-based medicine databases.
Use the search or advanced search from the top right corner. You can filter results by date, status, language, or topic.
To take advantage of special limiters for Compendex, (or Inspec or GeoRef) --- these three are searched together unless otherwise specified --- the other databases need to be turned off.
However, systematic reviews are not specifically labeled as a document type or as a treatment type in these databases. That means that you will need to use "systematic review" as part of the search statement to specifically look for that type of review.
For example: subject/title/abstract = seismic and retrofit* and "systematic review*"
Compendex To limit any subject search to a literature review:
Inspec To use the option to limit to a "General review,"
GeoRef There's no special treatment label.
To find systematic reviews in SciFinder, include the phase "systematic review" as part of a RESEARCH TOPIC search. For example:
systematic reviews of consumer anti-bacterial soaps
-As a subject index,
-As a citation index,
1) Use broader search terms than you will include in your own search protocol. This will help you find related reviews that may not explicitly match your research question but still be useful.
2) The term "systematic review" will not always appear in the title or abstract on an article. In some databases, you cannot limit your searches to a systematic review methodology. So, using a search string like the one below helps you catch more potential reviews of interest...
“systematic review*” OR "research synthesis" OR "synthesis of research" OR "meta analysis" OR "meta-analysis"
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