LibGuides: Systematic Search for Health: Proofreading checklist

Proofreading your search

Proofreading your search is a vital step in the review process, it minimises the likelihood of missing important studies, contributing to the comprehensiveness of your review. This process will help you confirm that your search is aligned with being transparent, reproducible, exhaustive and having minimal bias.

The proofreading checklist has been designed to help you self-assess the comprehensiveness of your search. Each element will prompt you to look for errors in your search strategy that could affect your results, such as narrow keywords and missed syntax.

After reviewing your search with this checklist, you can feel confident that your search is ready to be translated into other databases.

Proofreading Checklist

The research topic and search concepts

Does your search match the research topic?

Consider if you've included all relevant elements of PICO/your chosen research framework.

Is your search retrieving too few results?

Consider broadening your search by removing a concept or adding further synonym keywords.

Is your search retrieving too many results?

Consider narrowing your search by adding another concept or revising your keywords.

Is your search retrieving irrelevant results?

Check that your concepts closely match your research question and remove less important concepts, e.g. instead of searching for pregnancy AND women, just search for pregnancy.

Boolean operators

Are Boolean operators used correctly?

Use OR to combine keyword and subject headings lines to form a concept set.
Use AND to combine each concept set in the final line of the search.

Would using a proximity operator improve your search?

Check that the number of words used in your proximity expression is appropriate, e.g. would N3 or N5 be more effective?
Ensure that you place parentheses around any proximity groupings.
For more information, see our section on Proximity searching.

For consistency and ease of editing, capitalise Boolean operators (AND/OR)

Keywords

Have you included alternative terms for your keywords? Consider adding more specific terms, scientific names, and expanded acronyms/abbreviations.

Are some keywords too general? Have they returned too many irrelevant results?

Have you considered what vocabulary other author groups may use around the world? For example, in some countries 'university' is also known as 'college', so both search terms might be relevant.

Have you used fields to narrow to the title/abstract only? This will produce a more targeted search.

Subject Headings

Are the subject headings relevant to the concept? Ensure they are not too broad or too narrow.

Check for subject headings that have been used in your key articles.
Search the subject heading index to see what other subject headings may apply.

Are there any relevant subject headings missing?

Have you checked if it is appropriate to explode your subject heading search term?

Spelling and syntax

Check for spelling errors and consider UK and US spelling variations.

Have you used the correct syntax for the database and platform?

Is the truncation too broad or too narrow? Do you need to truncate at all?

E.g., Nurse* is too narrow. Use nurs* to find nurse, nurses, nursing.
E.g., Car* is too broad for caring terms. Use caring OR care*.

Where appropriate, have you used quotation marks to search for words as a phrase?

Check if the platform uses single (e.g. ‘mental health’) or double (e.g. “social media”) or no (e.g. young adult) quotation marks.

It’s best to search for hyphenated words in quotation marks, e.g. “well-being”

Did you combine syntax where appropriate? E.g., “physical* activ*”

Have you closed all of your open quotation marks or parentheses?

Limits and filters

Are your limits and filters relevant to your research question?

Can any limits or filters be added or removed?

Adapted from the PRESS Checklist for non-librarian users. PRESS – Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies: 2015 Guideline Explanation and Elaboration (PRESS E&E). Ottawa: CADTH; 2016 Jan.

Tip

Ask a colleague or supervisor to peer review your search strategy. They might pick up errors or biases which you missed.