The Tailored Approach

Previous work indicated that nine leading guidance documents for undertaking seven different types of systematic review suggest using the same process of literature searching for study identification. I illustrated this process for the first time and named it the Conventional Approach. See here for the open-access version of the paper: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-018-0545-3

The Tailored Approach (pictured below) is proposed as an alternative approach to study identification. It is intended for literature searching for systematic reviews and evidence syntheses which do not focus on clinical drugs or for searching where the Conventional Approach might not be suitable. It casts the information professional as decision-maker, leading a team-based approach to define the information needs, with searching which matches data to search methods as opposed to comprehensive sampling.