Once you have written your research question, conducted scoping searches, and completed your background reading, you are ready to plan a search strategy to find the research papers to include in your review. This page will guide you through the process of planning a systematic search strategy. A systematic search strategy is often a more complex or structured search strategy. The aim is to construct a search which balances sensitivity and specificity to find all relevant literature related to your review question.

The main difference between a systematic search and a standard literature search is that a systematic search is focused on finding research papers addressing a specific research question. It must have a transparent, replicable search strategy that can be documented in the systematic review.