A key part of conducting a systematic-style review is ensuring the reproducibility and transparency of your search (Cochrane Handbook, 4.5). This requires careful documentation of how you arrived at your search results. Start this process the moment you begin searching, and capture such details as:
The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA guidelines) are a crucial component of your review project. They are the gold standard for formally documenting search results for journal publication. These guidelines include a PRISMA flow diagram, and PRISMA checklist, which helps map the information found throughout the various stages of a systematic review. See below for a snapshot:
PRISMA and Cochrane resources for documenting and reporting your searchIt is best practice to capture your searches from the onset of your review process - particularly as the search will evolve as you progress through the various phases of your review. An easy way to capture this is to copy and paste the search string from the search history of the database platform and put it into a Word document. Be sure to include the date, and any details of filters/limits applied to the search.
You can save your searches by registering or signing in to a database. Once registered you can keep up-to-date by receiving alerts of articles in your research topic area as they are published. This is a free one-off process completed on the database homepage and commonly involves creating a username and password.
There are several tools available to help streamline your review and extract information from the vast amount of literature that needs to be reviewed as a part of a systematic review:
Exporting references from your database searches is usually straightforward, and generally involves the following steps:
See examples of exporting from various databases on the EndNote LibGuide:
You will need to follow the setup instructions for enabling Find Full Text.
Use EndNote's Change/Move/Copy Fields command to automatically add text (such as the name of the database, saved search name, or date searched) to your imported records.
This is very handy for keeping track of where records came from, and assists you if you need to return to the database for any reason later on.
Use EndNote's Groups and Group Sets command to quickly identify databases searched, then create individual groups to house results from each of the databases.
To create a Group Set (eg. the "Databases" set in the image below):
Select Groups > Create Group Set. Name the group set then press <Enter>.
Next, create each group to include in the set:
To add references to groups:
Once all databases have been searched, records downloaded into EndNote, and a note made of the number of results retrieved from each database, you must identify and delete duplicate records.
To ensure that all duplicate records are identified and deleted:
After running the EndNote Find Duplicates command it is essential that you follow up with a manual check of your Library for duplicates.
Re-sort your Library Window alphabetically by title (click the Title column heading), then visually scan, identify and delete duplicated records.
The following EndNote functionality may be used to assist systematic reviewers to code references, for example for inclusion or exclusion.
Use EndNote's Groups and Group Sets Command
To create a Group Set (eg. the "Excluded" set in the image below):
Next, create each group to include in the set:
To add references to groups:
Create customised fields for storing specific information about records:
Select Edit > Preferences > Reference Types from the left side of the Preferences window.
Select the Reference Type (eg. Journal Article) to adjust, then Modify Reference Types.
The template for each reference may be selected from the drop down list at the top of the Modify Reference Types window.
Within the Journal Article template, scroll down to one of the Custom fields, then type your inclusion/exclusion criteria in the cell to the immediate right.
This new field must be included within each of the Reference Type templates - select Apply to All Reference Types to apply across all templates, then click OK.
Adjusting your EndNote Library window to display customised fields
To change the column headings: