Conducting an Exploratory Search for a Systematic Review
Channel: University of Alabama Libraries
Date: 30/03/2022

In this video, Alex Boucher from the University of Alabama Libraries will walk you through how to conduct an exploratory/ introductory/ scoping search for a systematic literature review. You'll learn why you should conduct this type of search, and some basic guidelines for doing so.

• Visit our Research Guide for Systematic Reviews for more helpful resources: https://guides.lib.ua.edu/sysreviews
• UA Libraries website: https://libraries.ua.edu

Transcript: 
Hi, my name is Alex, I'm a librarian at The University of Alabama, and today we're going to talk about another aspect of conducting a systematic review: the exploratory or introductory search. 

When starting a systematic review, there are some clear first steps. Among other things, you'll need to construct a research question, assemble a review team, create a systematic review protocol, search for published systematic reviews on your topic, and develop a search strategy. Developing a search strategy involves several steps. 

You'll need to choose relevant databases, develop a list of keywords and subject headings, and construct a plan for searching for grey literature. During this process, we also recommend that you conduct what we're going to call an exploratory search. Sometimes this is also referred to as a "scoping search" although that can get confusing, because there is also a "scoping review" which is a specific type of literature review.

For the exploratory search, you'll want to choose 1-2 of your most relevant databases. We've chosen PubMed for this video. You'll then want to construct a search using keywords and/or subject headings. The first thing I want to establish with an exploratory search is the volume of results we're getting. Does a well-constructed search bring back enough results to support a systematic review? If not, you may need to look at broadening your research question. Conversely, too many results might prompt your team to narrow the question or the inclusion/exclusion criteria. It's also worthwhile to experiment with search strings at this point. You'll want to test various search strings in order to determine their efficacy.

And you'll want to use the exploratory search in order to continue to iterate on and build out your list of keywords and subject headings. You may simply notice keywords popping up in the titles and abstracts of relevant articles. You'll also find author-supplied keywords on the record page of an article. Finally, the record page of an article is also an excellent place to find relevant subject headings. On PubMed, they're called MeSH terms and you can simply click on the list of terms on any relevant article.

And that's all for this video. Hopefully you know have a better understanding of what an exploratory/scoping search is and why it's an important step in the systematic review process. And remember, if you have any questions, just Ask a Librarian.