Search across guide titles, topics, keywords, and content throughout the Researcher's Field Guide.
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A field can produce many studies while repeatedly comparing the same options. Learn how to identify unanswered questions hidden behind familiar comparison groups.
Read Guide →You usually cannot prove that you found every relevant paper. What you can do is design, test, document, and cross-check your search well enough to make missing important literature reasonably unlikely.
Read Guide →Your final search should be recent enough that important new evidence is unlikely to make the submitted or published work materially outdated. Formal review standards may specify a maximum interval, while other projects require a judgment based on how quickly the field changes.
Read Guide →Finishing the writing does not freeze the evidence base. When new research appears, assess whether it changes your claims, synthesis, research gap, or conclusions, then revise proportionately rather than automatically rewriting everything.
Read Guide →A newly available database can improve an updated review, but it should not be added automatically. Assess whether it contributes relevant coverage, whether it overlaps existing sources, and whether it needs to be searched retrospectively.
Read Guide →A weak original search should not be reproduced merely for consistency. Identify the weakness, redesign the affected parts of the search, test the revised strategy, and determine whether earlier evidence must be searched again.
Read Guide →Not every literature review requires a formal protocol, but structured evidence syntheses generally benefit from prospective methodological planning. For systematic and scoping reviews, a protocol helps establish the question and methods before the emerging evidence can influence important decisions.
Read Guide →Preregistration creates a time-stamped public record of a planned review before its findings are known. It can strengthen transparency and help distinguish prespecified methods from later changes, but registration options and requirements differ between systematic and scoping reviews.
Read Guide →Two reviewers do not need to perform every systematic-review task independently, but independent duplicate assessment is an important safeguard at consequential stages. In major guidance such as Cochrane, final study inclusion decisions and outcome-data extraction require at least two people working independently.
Read Guide →There is no fixed number of years after which another review becomes justified. A recent review may still need updating or replacing if its question, methods, coverage, or evidence base no longer supports the answer researchers need.
Read Guide →An older review does not automatically need replacing simply because several years have passed. What matters is whether new evidence or methodological developments could meaningfully change what the review tells us.
Read Guide →A newer method does not automatically make an older review obsolete. Another review is most defensible when methodological developments could materially improve the evidence, analysis, certainty, or conclusions.
Read Guide →Two reviews addressing similar questions are not automatically wasteful. Duplication becomes problematic when another review consumes substantial resources without adding useful evidence, verification, methodological improvement, or reduction in uncertainty.
Read Guide →Publicity does not make a research finding unreliable, but it can magnify the consequences of getting the interpretation wrong. Learn how to scrutinize highly visible findings without assuming they are false.
Read Guide →A literature review becomes unreliable when sources are selected because their conclusions feel convincing or compatible with the researcher's position. Separate decisions about relevance and methodological quality from whether you agree with what a study found.
Read Guide →Reviewing literature outside your discipline requires more than finding relevant papers. Learn how to orient yourself to an unfamiliar field, search iteratively, interpret studies in disciplinary context, and recognize when you need expert help.
Read Guide →You do not need to master an unfamiliar discipline's entire vocabulary before searching it. Learn how to use relevant papers, indexing terms, databases, and iterative searching to build the vocabulary your literature search actually needs.
Read Guide →Your usual database may cover part of an unfamiliar discipline without covering it well. Learn how to identify the specialist databases and important publication venues that actually structure a field's literature.
Read Guide →A highly local research question often requires more than adding a place name to a database search. Learn how to combine broad scholarly searching with local databases, repositories, grey literature, contextual terminology, and transparent search documentation.
Read Guide →Local theses and dissertations can reveal studies that never reached journal publication, particularly for highly local topics. Their inclusion should depend on the research question and eligibility criteria, not on either their local origin or unpublished status.
Read Guide →When published evidence is scarce, searching grey literature more extensively can uncover studies, results, and ongoing research that conventional databases miss. The search should become more targeted and transparent, not simply broader without limit.
Read Guide →Tens of thousands of search results do not automatically mean your literature search has failed. Learn how to diagnose why a search is so large and narrow it in ways that remain defensible for your research question.
Read Guide →Searching more databases does not automatically make a literature review comprehensive. What matters is whether your chosen sources collectively cover the disciplines, publication types, regions, and terminology relevant to your question.
Read Guide →Relevant studies do not always use the terminology you expect. A defensible search anticipates alternative language without assuming that simply adding more terms will make the search better.
Read Guide →Published journal articles may represent a selective subset of completed research. When missing studies or results could affect your conclusion, searching beyond conventional publications may be methodologically important.
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