Blog
Guides for systematic reviewers
Practical writing on searching the medical literature — including the databases most reviews leave out.
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Field syntax, the classic vs modern interface, and how to surface completed-but-unpublished trials your review is missing.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.