Guidance on terminology, application, and reporting of citation searching: the TARCiS statement

Synthesising scientific evidence by looking at the citation relationships of a scientific record (ie, citation searching) was the underlying objective when the Science Citation Index, the antecedent of Web of Science, was introduced in 1963.1 Although the availability of electronic citation indexes has increased, evidence syntheses in systematic reviews do not primarily rely on citation searching for literature retrieval but rather on search methods based on text and keywords.2 When used in systematic review workflows, citation searching traditionally constitutes a supplementary search technique that builds on an initial set of references from the primary database search (seed references).3Citation searching is an umbrella term that entails various methods of citation based literature retrieval (fig 1). Checking references cited by seed references, also known as backward citation searching, is the most prevalent and a mandatory step when conducting Cochrane reviews.4 In forward citation searching, systematic reviewers can also assess the eligibility of…
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