Effective searching of the LILACS database for systematic reviews

Article type
Authors
Glujovsky D1, Rada G2
1Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy, Argentina
2Evidence Based Health Care Program Faculty of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile
Abstract
Objectives:

To enable participants to operate an effective searching on the LILACS database in order to retrieve relevant information to improve the conduct of Systematic Reviews.

Description:

Information retrieval for systematic reviews needs to be comprehensive in order to identify those studies which will provide a reliable result. The range of databases used to identify those studies, and particularly the inclusion of regional databases such as LILACS, the Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences database, varies across organisations. Information specialists and others involved in searching for studies for evidence syntheses such as systematic reviews need to be aware of regional databases such as LILACS and how best to search them to identify studies not included in other major bibliographic databases such as MEDLINE and EMBASE. The workshop will include an overview of the LILACS database and will focus on issues such as journal coverage, multilingual searching (to identify records in English, Portuguese and Spanish), advantages of searching these resources in addition to other databases, search features, downloading records, any current limitations to the search interface and plans for future enhancements.