Advanced Search & Gathering for Systematic Reviews

The Gather step is the foundation of your Systematic Review. It allows you to build a comprehensive body of evidence by running multiple search strategies in parallel, combining different data sources (like semantic questions, Boolean strings, and Clinical Trial registries) into a single, reproducible protocol.

Unlike a standard search, the Gather workflow is designed for iteration. You can test different queries side-by-side, review your search history, and curate exactly which strategies feed into your final screening.

In a rigorous review, a single search query is rarely enough. The Gather interface allows you to layer multiple search strategies to ensure you don't miss key papers.

To add a new search strategy:

1. Locate the Paper sources bar at the top of the interface.

2. Click the + (Plus) icon to open a new tab.

3. Choose your search method:

   • Question Search: Best for natural language exploration.

   • Keyword Search: Best for precise Boolean strings.

   • Upload Papers: To include PDFs you already possess.

Why use multiple tabs?

• A/B Testing: Keep your original search in "Tab 1" as a control. Create "Tab 2" to test a variation of your query. You can click back and forth to see which strategy retrieves more relevant results.

• Combining Methodologies: You can have one tab dedicated to broad semantic discovery and another dedicated to a strict Boolean string. Elicit automatically de-duplicates papers across all active tabs.

• Keyword-Exclusive search strategies: When using Elicit as part of something like an HTA filing, using a variety of keyword searches is standard practice.

Research is rarely linear. As you refine your question, you may want to revisit previous versions of your search to see what changed.

• Refining a Search: You can update the text in any search bar and click Update search to refresh the results for that specific tab.

• Search History: If you need to go back to a previous query, click the History button located next to the Filters bar. This opens a log of previous queries run in that tab, allowing you to restore a past search strategy instantly.

The Gather workflow gives you granular control over how Elicit searches and where it looks.

Keyword Search (Boolean Logic) If you select Keyword Search from the + menu, you can enter precise Boolean strings using operators like AND, OR, and NOT.

• Example: ("type 2 diabetes" OR "diabetes mellitus") AND (mortality OR survival)

• Note: For a full guide on formatting these strings, see Keyword search in Systematic Reviews.

Searching Specific Databases (e.g., Clinical Trials) By default, Elicit searches our primary corpus of over 125 million research papers (sourced from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and others—see Elicit's source for papers).

However, you can target specific corpora:

1. Click the Source dropdown (top left of the search bar, usually reading "Research papers").

2. Select Clinical trials.

3. This searches registries like ClinicalTrials.gov and enables trial-specific filters (e.g., Recruitment Status, Phase).

The tabs at the top of your Gather screen represent the active scope of your review.

• Active Tabs = Included Papers: All papers found in the tabs currently open in your "Paper sources" bar will move forward to the Screening step.

• Closing Tabs = Excluding Papers: If you decide a search strategy isn't working, simply click the X on that search tab.

  • Warning: Closing a tab removes those search results from your systematic review entirely. They will not appear in the next steps (Screening or Extraction) and will not be included in the final PRISMA diagram.

One of the most powerful features of the Gather workflow is that it self-documents. You do not need to manually track which search strings you used or how many results they returned.

When you proceed to Generate report, Elicit will automatically:

1. Generate a PRISMA flow diagram: This visualizes exactly how many papers were identified from each specific search tab/source.

2. Document Methods: The "Methods" section of your report will list the exact query strings and Boolean logic used for every active tab, alongside the date and database source.