Literature and Systematic Reviews for Public Health

Now that you have finished the first draft of your search strategy, you will run the search in PubMed. Next, you'll evaluate your results and make any edits, corrections, or updates that are needed to your search strategy. Once you have finalized the search, you'll translate it to run in databases like Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, or other databases.

Now, you can past this entire strategy in the search bar in PubMed and click "Search."

Look at your search results. Are you finding the type of literature you're looking for? Are you missing some key articles that you've already identified as important and relevant? Are you getting too much "noise," or irrelevant articles?

Making adjustments to your search is as simple as adding, subtracting, or editing keywords from the groups of parentheses that you have made for each concept. It's easier to make these updates in a separate document where you've been building your search strategy, but you can also make those adjustments right in the PubMed search bar.

("access to water"[tw] OR "water access"[tw] OR "drinking water"[tw] OR "clean water"[tw] OR "water treatment"[tw] OR "Water Insecurity"[MeSH])

AND

("food insecurity"[tw] OR "food security"[tw] OR "food accessibility"[tw] OR "access to food"[tw] OR "food access" OR malnutrition[tw] OR "Food Insecurity"[Mesh] OR "Malnutrition"[Mesh])

AND

("East Africa"[tw] OR Burundi[tw] OR Djibouti[tw] OR Eritrea[tw] OR Ethiopia[tw] OR Kenya[tw] OR Rwanda[tw] OR Somalia[tw] OR Sudan[tw] OR Tanzania[tw] OR Uganda[tw] OR "Africa, Eastern"[Mesh])

Once you've made your adjustments, paste your search into PubMed again and evaluate your results.

Searching is an iterative process; you may need to run the search several times, making updates each time.

When you're satisfied with your PubMed search, you need to export the search results so that you can screen them in Covidence later.

On the results page, under the search bar, click on "Save" and then make sure you select "All results" in the "Selection" dropdown, and "PubMed" in the "Format" dropdown, then click "Create File."

Depending on your browser settings, this .txt file may download automatically to your computer's Downloads folder, or it may ask you to choose where to save the file. Save this file in a safe space for later.

Each database has its own syntax, or language, for understanding search queries. For databases other than PubMed, you'll need to remove the MeSH terms and the [tw] field tags.

("access to water" OR "water access" OR "drinking water" OR "clean water" OR "water treatment")

AND

("food insecurity" OR "food security" OR "food accessibility" OR "access to food" OR "food access" OR malnutrition)

AND

("East Africa" OR Burundi OR Djibouti OR Eritrea OR Ethiopia OR Kenya OR Rwanda OR Somalia OR Sudan OR Tanzania OR Uganda)

Systematic review searches are typically run across several databases in order to capture all relevant literature. When you're doing a systematic review as part of your thesis or capstone, you may have adjusted the methodology so that you are only looking in one or two other databases. For the most part, you can copy and paste your search--with the PubMed syntax removed--into the search bars of these other databases. If you have the option to select where you're searching, choose title/abstract.

Here are some examples of what that looks like in various databases.

Embase

Scopus

Web of Science

Make sure that you choose "Topic" from the dropdown.

CINAHL

Make sure you select "Title and Abstract" from the dropdown.

Each database has a slightly different way to export results. You'll want to make sure that you select all of the search results and then export them as a RIS or .ris file. This is what that looks like in Embase, as an example.

Now you'll create a project in Covidence, import your results, and begin screening the studies you've found.