Systematic review guide

Search Fields 
The default fields for basic searches are Title, Abstract and Subject Headings. The database will search those places for the keywords entered. It is not searching for subject headings, merely looking for incidences of your keywords in that field. You should add any desired headings into your search separately by clicking the Suggest Subject Headings option above the search box. 

To search in titles and abstracts only use the Advanced Search screen and choose the option XB Title and Abstract from the drop down menu.

You will be able to see your Search History at the top of your results. You can combine the lines using AND or OR here. 

Phrase Searching 
Use quotation marks to find exact phrases. E.g. “mobile phone” will search for those two exact words together in that order. However, if you also need to use truncation as well use NEXT instead e.g. mobile NEXT phone*. 

Singular/plurals/US/UK spelling variant searching 
CINAHL does not map your keywords to alternate spellings e.g paediatrics will not find pediatric, paediatric or pediatrician. 
If a word is sometimes hyphenated, search using the hyphen to find both versions e.g. a search for “health-care” would bring back health care and health-care. However it will not find healthcare so this must be searched separately.  

Truncation 
Use * at the end of a word “root” to find more words that have any number of characters after the symbol. Cancer* will find cancer but also cancers, cancered and cancerous.  

Wildcards 
# can replace 0 or 1 character within a word e.g. wom#n will find women/woman. Behavio#r will find both behaviour/behavior. 

Proximity searching 
Use Nn to control the proximity of keywords to each other in a phrase. Liver N1 fail* will search for liver and fail/fails/failure etc. together, in either order, with 0 or 1 words in between e.g. liver transplant failed.  
Liver N2 fail* will find the words together in either order, with 0,1 or 2 words in between e.g. failure of the liver. 
The Within operator (W) works similarly but will only find the words in the same order you entered. Liver W2 failure will find liver failure and liver transplant failure but not failure of the liver. 

Finding Subject Headings 
Find CINAHL’s Subject Headings to match a particular topic using the “Suggest Subject Terms” tickbox above the search box or by clicking the CINAHL Subject Headings option on the blue menu at the top of the screen. Enter an appropriate term and click search. Related headings will be displayed. You may click on them to see where they fit in the hierarchy (to discover broader and narrower headings). CINAHLs subject headings are mixture of MeSh and CINAHLs own headings that focus more deeply on nursing and allied health subjects.
 

Search Screen 
Use the “Basic Search” screen. This allows you to enter keywords and use truncation, wildcards and proximity searching.  
Combine keywords with AND/OR within a search field or click the “Add search field” option to add extra search fields. Combine separate search fields using the AND/OR drop-down menu between them. 
You can also manage and combine search lines with AND/OR in the Search History area. To view your Search History click the “Advanced search” option and scroll down to the bottom of the page. 

Search Fields 
The default is the Title, Abstract, Keyword fields. 

Phrase searching 
No automatic phrase searching. Heart attack will be translated to heart AND attack. Both words may be present in the results, but one could be in the title and the other in the abstract. 
Curly brackets { } will search for a specific and exact phrase. It limits the search to only the specified character string, and punctuation like hyphens will not be ignored and any wildcard symbols will be treated as punctuation. This means {heart attack} will only search for heart attack but not heart attacks or heart-attack.  

Singular/plurals/US/UK spelling variant searching 
Double quotes “ “ will search for fuzzy phrases. This means it looks for both  the singular and plurals of your keywords (with some exceptions) but wildcards and truncation can also be used. For instance “heart-attack” will search for heart-attack, heart attack, heart attacks etc. Scopus automatically searches both US and UK spellings, eliminating the need to use wildcards or enter separate terms for words like colour or organization. 

Truncation 
An asterisk can be used at the start, middle and ends of words (lefthand, internal and righthand truncation). *Medical will find biomedical as well as medical. Bio*engineering will find biochemicalengineering as well as bioengineering. Pregnan* will find pregnant/pregnancy/pregnancies. 

Wildcards 
? represents a missing character e.g. wom?n will find women or woman. You can use it multiple times e.g. buckt??th will find bucktooth or buckteeth. 

Proximity Searching 
W/n indicates distance between words, but not the order - e.g. journal W/2 publishing, where journal can be found within a distance of two words from publishing. Pre/n, Terms must appear in a specific order between words - e.g. behavioral  PRE/3  disturbances, where behavioral precedes disturbances within three words 

Finding Subject Headings 
There is no option to search with subject headings in Scopus.

Search screen 
Web of Science is a platform consisting of several literature search databases. You should turn Smart Search off to do your systematic review searching. You can choose to search ‘All Databases’ or individual ones from the Collections drop down menu above the search box. 

To combine the different lines of your searches, go to Advanced Search and you will be able to see what you have searched at the bottom of the page. 

Search Fields 
“Topic” searches for your keywords in the title, abstract, author keywords, and Keywords Plus fields. 

Phrase searching 
No automatic phrase searching. Heart attack will be translated to heart AND attack. Use quotation marks to find exact phrases. “Mobile phone” will only find those two words together in that order. You can use wildcards/truncation in your exact phrase search e.g “mobile phone*” will find mobile phone and mobile phones. 

Singular/plurals/US/UK spelling variant searching 
WoS automatically uses lemmatization and stemming when you do a search in the English language. This means that it will automatically search for words linked to that root e.g. searching for cite will also bring back results for citing, cites, cited, citations etc. This won’t happen if you use quotation marks around the word e.g. “colour” will not search for the American spelling of “color.” It also won’t happen if you use truncation or wildcards in your search or if you are searching in a language other than English.  

WoS ignores hyphens and reads them as a gap between characters, entering sub-orbital would find sub-orbital as well as sub orbital, but not suborbital. Apostrophes are treated as spaces, not searchable characters. Be sure to search for variants with no apostrophe as well. For example, Paget's OR Pagets finds records containing Paget's and Pagets. 

Truncation   
To find words with a common “root” an asterisk can be used at the start, middle and ends of words (lefthand, internal and righthand truncation). *Medical will find biomedical as well as medical.  Pregnan* will find pregnant/pregnancy/pregnancies. You must enter at least three characters after a wildcard when using lefthand truncation and three characters before a wildcard when using righthand truncation.  

Bio*engineering will find biochemicalengineering as well as bioengineering. Using the asterisk for internal truncation will find options with many letters between the root so you may find it easier to use the wildcards listed below for more control over what you are searching.  

Wildcards 
? represents 1 missing character e.g. wom?n will find women or woman. You can use it multiple times e.g. buckt??th will find bucktooth or buckteeth. $ can replace 0 or 1 characters within a word e.g. Behavio$r will find both behaviour and behavior. 

Proximity searching 
Only works in Advanced Search and not with the default All Fields option so use the drop down box to search either with Topic or one of the more specific fields such as Title. 

Use NEAR/x to find records where the terms joined by the NEAR operator are within a specified number of words of each other in any order. Replace the x with a number to specify the maximum number of words that separate the terms.   
Child* NEAR/0 cancer* will search for those two words together in either order (and with the truncation will also find childhood cancer or cancerous children.)  
Child* NEAR/1 cancer* will find those two words and their variants together in either order. It will also find those two words with 0 or 1 word in between (childhood skin cancers/cancer in children/childhood cancer etc.).   

Subject Headings
Subject Headings are not available.

Search screen 
Use the Search Manager tab in Advanced Search to enter keywords and subject headings, as well as manage and combine search lines with AND/OR. 

Search Fields  
The default is the Title Abstract Keyword fields. 

Phrase searching 
No automatic phrase searching , use quotation marks to find exact phrases. E.g. “mobile phone” will only search for those two words together in that order, with no plurals or variants. Note that phrase searching does not support the use of wildcards. Use the NEXT operator for loose phrases instead e.g. mobile NEXT phone* will find mobile phone and mobile phones.  

Singular/plurals/US/UK spelling variant searching  
Automatic stemming is available if you tick the "Search word variations" tick box under the search limits. The stemming includes: Linguistic variants: clear finds clear, clears, cleared, clearing, clearer, clearest. Common British vs. American spelling variants: tumor also finds tumour. Non-standard plural variants: mouse also finds mice. Common irregular verbs: run also finds ran, runs, running. 

When using the Search Manager tab, automatic stemming will be disabled when search terms include truncation (*). Tumour* would find tumour and tumours but not tumors or tumor. Run* would find run, runs, running but not ran. 

Truncation   
Use * or ? to find terms containing a common word root. * searches for one or more characters and ? for zero or one characters. E.g .Nurse? finds nurse and nurses but not nursing. Nurs* finds nurse, nurses and nursing. 
The * can be used at the start, middle and ends of words (lefthand, internal and righthand truncation). *Medical will find biomedical as well as medical. Leuk*mia finds both leukemia and leukaemia. Pregnan* will find pregnant/pregnancy/pregnancies. 

Wildcards 
? represents 1 or 0 missing characters and can be used at the start, middle and ends of words (lefthand, internal and righthand). ?edema will find edema and oedema, wom?n will find women and woman, cancer? will find cancer and cancers. The word root must be at least 3 characters.   
 
Proximity searching 
NEAR finds the terms when they are within 6 words of each other. Terms can appear in either order. E.g: cancer NEAR lung finds lung cancer as well as cancer of the lung. NEAR/n allows you to specific the number of words between each term – which can appear either order e.g. cancer near/3 lung finds lung cancer as well as cancer of the lung. 

NEXT finds the terms when they appear right next to each other in the order specified. E.g. lung NEXT cancer finds lung cancer but not cancer of the lung. It also supports wildcards e.g. mobile NEXT phone* finds mobile phone and mobile phones. 

Subject headings 
Cochrane uses the same MeSH thesaurus as MEDLINE for subject headings. To find the subject heading for a topic move to the “Medical Terms (MeSH)” tab above the search box. Enter your term in the search box and click on suggested term and “lookup”. You can then browse the MeSH display. The MeSH display is broken up into four areas: Definition provides information on how this term is indexed. Thesaurus Matches provides a list of MeSH terms containing one or more of your terms. MeSH Trees shows you all the trees a term appears in, allowing you to explode and include narrower headings, or search only with the selected heading. You can browse the trees to view broader/narrower headings. Search Results shows how many results you will get using the heading. 
To add the subject heading into your search history click “Add to Search Manager”.