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Research

Searching the literature

Steps involved in searching the literature

  • Clearly define your topic (or question)
  • Select the database/s and other resources to be searched
  • Construct a search strategy suitable for each individual database or other resource
  • Run the search/es
  • Review the results
  • Save and deduplicate results (where appropriate)

Search tools

To minimise looking at the same reference multiple times when searching across databases, it can be useful to combine the results of your searches and deduplicate them, prior to screening for relevant articles.

The following tools provide an automated approach to deduplication of search results. 

EndNote is also commonly used to deduplicate search results.

Guidance on this is provided in the article by Bramer et al. and by McGill University Library.

Covidence can also be used to deduplicate results of searches for a systematic review.

Search filters are pre-prepared search strategies tailored to a particular database for the purpose of standardisation and speeding up search formulation. The best search filters are created using a rigorous methodology and are tested and validated for optimal retrieval.

We recommend that you check collations of filters, or search for one before beginning to construct a search – someone else may have already created one.

Some organisations collate filters and make them available on websites including: