Medical specialists, students, and other health professionals often have to search the literature for answers to medical questions. Medical libraries have long offered mediated search services that require librarians with thorough search skills. In the literature, several instructive texts can be found on how to created good searches, but how effective are they? Is there a gold standard for searching?

Some widely used guidelines such as the PRESS instrument or the PRISMA statement are not instructive; they only allow checking the completeness of an existing search strategy. The Cochrane handbook [ 1 ] is frequently used and cited when constructing a systematic review, but is it instructive enough to create a good search strategy? PubMed and other websites and databases have published extensive online tutorials with descriptions of their databases and specific search methods. Which sources are needed for creating a solid search strategy, and are they enough to create a thorough search for systematic reviews, for instance?