Systematic review guide

A full systematic review should look at every relevant resource available. You should therefore consider the scope, time and resources available for your review when defining your research question. The search should include both published articles, found in databases, and grey literature.

Bibliographic databases are the best resources to use to search for journal articles because they allow advanced, structured searches. You can easily import to reference management software and save your results so they can be adapted as you discover new search terms.  

See the following video for advice on identifying relevant bibliographic databases.

The Medicine subject support resources page lists the databases we subscribe to at Imperial that we believe will be most useful to those involved in medical research. These include those that are focused on health topics, such as the databases provided by Ovid, as well as interdisciplinary databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. If you are from outside Medicine or researching an area that is not just health related you can also check the subject support pages for those topics to see if the librarians recommend any other specialist databases.

See the following video for advice on how to access bibliographic databases.

Access to databases for NHS library members

Members of our affiliated NHS Trusts can access a range of bibliographic resources. Details can be found at databases, e-journals and e-books.