Systematic searching: Handsearching

• Carefully browse the main scientific journals and other publications on a given topic. Perhaps you already know the key publications in your subject area, or you can look at which journal titles appear most often in search results.
• Use forward and backward citation chains.
  • Select the most relevant documents from the search results as 'core documents'
  • Take a look at their bibliographies. Many databases suggest similar or related articles and some databases also show articles that cite the article.
  • Make use of search engines designed for searching and analysing references, such as Citationchaser, CoCites and Dimensions.

Most databases allow setting up alerts that will notify by e-mail of new publications that match your search criteria.