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Evidence synthesis

Preliminary searching

Once the research question and selection criteria for the review have been finalised and a research gap has been confirmed, conduct preliminary searching to identify key seeding articles.

Seeding articles are articles that meet your inclusion criteria and can be used to help identify useful search terms to build your main systematic search.

Where to do preliminary searching for seeding articles

  • Search engines, such as Google Scholar
  • Multi-disciplinary citation databases, such as Scopus or Web of Science
  • Key discipline databases, such as ERIC for education, Medline for biomedicine, psycINFO for psychology or SocINDEX for social sciences.
  • AI search engines and tools, such as ResearchRabbit or Elicit 
  • Reference lists of key articles that have been recommend by others

Literature review modules

For further information and instructions on preparing and developing a preliminary search strategy for a literature review please explore our Module 4: Searching for Literature - Preliminary search.

Further resources

If you are interesting in further information on this stage of a review, check out the following resources:

 

  • Last Updated: Jun 5, 2025 1:19 PM
  • URL: https://deakin.libguides.com/evidence-synthesis
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