Systematic reviewers usually useseveral databases tosearchfor literature. Thisensures that the searching is comprehensive and biases are minimised.
Use both subject-specificand multidisciplinary databases to find resources relevant to your research question:
- Subject-specific databases: in-depth coverage of literature specific to a research field.
- Multi-disciplinary databases: literature from many research fields - help you find resources from disciplines you may not have considered.
Check fordatabases in your subject area via the Databases tab > Find by subject on the library homepage.
Find thekey databases that are often used for systematic reviews in this guide.
Test searches to determine database usefulness. You can consultyour Liaison Librarians to finalise the list of databases for your review.
Recommendations:
For all systematic reviews we recommend using Scopus, ahigh-quality, multidisciplinary database:
Scopus
- Scopus is anabstract and citation databasewith links to full text on publisherwebsites or in other databases.
- Scopus indexes acurated collectionof high quality journals along with books and conference proceedings.
- Research outputs are across a range of fields - science, technology, medicine, social science, arts and humanities.
For systematic reviews within the health/biomedical field, we recommend including Medline as one of thedatabases for your review:
MEDLINE(via Ebsco, via Ovid,via PubMed)
- Medline is the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) article citation database.
- Medline is hosted individually on a variety of platforms (EBSCO, OVID) and comprises the majority of PubMed.
- Articles in Medline are indexed usingMeSH headings. See Subject headings for more information on MeSH.
Note: PubMed contains all of Medline and additional citations, e.g. books, manuscripts, citations that predate Medline.
