Question

In the context of a systematic review, what is handsearching?

	A.	Manually searching the table of contents of key journals
	B.	Handpicking the authors to search for in “author searches” of bibliographic databases
	C.	Retrieving studies by handwriting letters of requests for reprints
	D.	Handpicking the journals from which studies will be selected

Answer 1

In the context of the systemic review, what is hand searching?

A. Manually searching the table of contents of key journals.

It started from the olden days. That time the researchers don't have access to listed bibliographic databases of past, current. Therefore they need to do the hand search of journals of the relevant studies literally. Handsearching is the manual search of contents of key journals. It is time-consuming but has potential value.

It is important in the systemic review because it helps

• to locate the relevant articles unindexed.
• The researchers can copy the content from the journals.
• The relevant studies are noticed properly.