Blog
Guides for systematic reviewers
Practical writing on searching the medical literature — including the databases most reviews leave out.
Guide
How to do a literature review: a step-by-step guide
From research question to written review — searching beyond PubMed, screening, organizing, and comparing what you find.
Overview
Everything Symmathy does, in one guide
Search 12 databases worldwide, read results in English, scan PDFs, compare papers, and work as a team — with a source on every line.
Guide
Notes and team collaboration for literature reviews
Private notes on every paper, a shared team workspace with @mentions — and sharing never removes anything from your library.
Guide
How to compare medical research papers side by side
Endpoints, effect sizes, and study notes in one view — then download or share the comparison as a print-ready PDF.
Methods
How to summarize a medical research paper
The fields every summary needs — and how to check one against the source in seconds, from any PDF in any language.
Guide
How to scan a research paper PDF into a structured summary
PICO fields, page-cited findings, and limitations from any medical PDF in any language — without the file leaving your device.
Explainer
What is federated search?
One query, many databases. What federated search means for medical literature, and where it helps most.
Guide
How to search J-STAGE for Japanese medical research
Thousands of Japanese medical journals PubMed never indexed — what J-STAGE covers, and how to search it in English.
Guide
How to search the LILACS database in English
DeCS instead of MeSH, field tags that differ from PubMed, and how to export records from the VHL portal.
Guide
How to search the Cochrane Library
CDSR vs CENTRAL, MeSH explosion, proximity operators, and the mistakes that quietly shrink your results.
Guide
How to search ClinicalTrials.gov for a systematic review
Field syntax, the classic vs modern interface, and how to surface completed-but-unpublished trials your review is missing.
Comparison
PubMed vs Europe PMC
Overlapping but not identical. What each index covers, and why searching both changes your yield.
Methods
Non-English studies in systematic reviews
What the Cochrane Handbook actually says about language restrictions, and how to search beyond English.
Worked example
PubMed vs Symmathy: a dengue search
The same question run two ways, with the records each approach surfaced and where the gaps were.