I have read some papers on systematic literature review and those paper do not seem to mention their argumentation on their choice of scientific database that they employ. On the other hand, I found web of science is more selective than google scholar as shown by its fewer publication recommendations on similar topics. I still wonder on the best scientific database.
I have seen that the most popular are Scopus and Web of Science, but in engineering is very used IEEE xplore.
Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE explore all come usne good scientific database.
Following may be useful for you. Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, CINAHL.
Since we need to cover the major area of literature in the literature review, we should use different database according to our subject area; for example in the field of medicine, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, Pubmed(Medline), Embase, Cochrane and Google Scholar should be considered. In the field of nursing, CINAHL must be added to previous databases. Additionally, there are other databases such as OVID, ProQuest, ClinicalKey and DOAJ in the area of medicine literature with special applications which mentioned in their sites. Therefore the best scientific databaseS fot literature review are related to the subject area of our research as well as the amount of coverage we want to give.
Use of the appropriate database is dependent on your field of study. As such, it’s important to ensure the use of databases that are within the same research topic area to ensure the identification of relevant and eligible citations for inclusion in your review. So, it’s good to start by scoping the databases or checking reviews around your topic area to see what databases they used. I hope this helps. Goodluck.
Thank you very much Jesús Pérez Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman Emad Kamil Hussein Gulbir Singh Aijaz Panhwar Hojat Dehghanbanadaki Abasiama Etuknwa those answers give me broaden insights particularly in considering the field and comparing the databases!
Just found a paper that comprehensively explores the databases here
It highly depends on your research topic and the degree you want to cover the literature of that certain research field. If you chose to cover a representative set of literature I recommend to chose database which include a lot of highly ranked journals and conferences. VHB (mostly economic/management driven outlets) and guide2research provide a very good analysis of different ranking. IEEE and ACM have a decent amount of highly ranked technical journals and conference. If you want to address a more broad focus scopus or web of science is a good choice. If your research is to be located in the areas of information systems , I can recommend Ebsco Host (especially business source premier), Sciencedirect and the AIS library.
The approach of saturation in combination with a backward and/or forward search offers a good method to measure how far a representative part of the literature is covered
For medical students it isn’t Cochrane and for social science papers from web of science google scholar proquest etc
I think that OSA, Elsevier, IEEE, and Springer are suitable data base.
I am not sure if there is one best database. PubMed does have an extensive variety and volume of research articles and is usually the first database people search while starting a systematic review. However, various other databases have their own plus points so there is no one best choice. PubMed and google scholar are the go-to ones for everyone since they are freely accessible and can be used by anyone and everyone!
In general, some may argue that there isn't any "best" scientific database to be used for systematic literature reviews. As already anticipated by others, the choice depends on several factors, including the topic/subject, the review question, some methodological considerations, bibliographic characteristics of scientific databases and your limitations to freely get access to them.
With regard to medicine and life sciences, the Cochrane Handbook states that "the three bibliographic databases generally considered to be the most important sources to search for reports of trials are CENTRAL, MEDLINE and Embase". Other authors suggest to include even Web of Science and Google Scholar. A good idea can be to further expand this list of databases depending on your study subject (for example: if the topic regards mental health, then go for PsycINFO; if it is about physiotherapy, then consider PEDro; etc.).
Keep in mind that your aim should be always to achieve the best literature coverage and, therefore, the more databases you include in your search, the better it is to improve the "systematicity" or comprehensiveness of your work.
Best wishes for your research!
Here you are an article with additional details on the topic:
Article Reading and interpreting reviews for health professionals: a...
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Papers