Developing searchRxiv: An International Transdisciplinary Repository for Search Strategies

Background: Documenting, saving, and sharing search strategies is an important component of transparent reporting for systematic reviews. It is also helpful for individual practice, enabling valuable search “blocks” on a myriad of topics to be shared, modified, and reused. Though documentation and sharing are critical, these activities have been scattered across dozens of resources, from individual journal supplemental files to, rarely, institutional repositories. Shared search block resources that have been developed previously have never been adopted broadly; successful platforms for documentation and sharing have been local. We sought to develop a transdisciplinary platform to share search strategies and their documentation.

Description: We collaborated with CABI to develop searchRxiv, a new subject agnostic platform for documenting and sharing search strategies. Initial conversations led to the development of a proposal for a standardised file type for documenting systematic searches, which outlined the key background issues shaping the platform, including the current state of poor reporting quality of search strategies, the need for librarians to receive credit for their intellectual contributions, and a lack of accessibility to search strategies as a contributor to research waste. We proposed creating a platform which would: improve accuracy of search strategy documentation, create citable records for each search strategy, and be openly available to improve accessibility. We established an Advisory Group to provide feedback on the proposal, data elements, and standards required for maximum benefit and reproducibility. 27 data elements were proposed after review by the Advisory Group.

Conclusion: Using the initial proposal, plus the data elements and standards proposed by the core group and the Advisory Group, CABI developed searchRxiv (searchrxiv.org) in mid-2021, built on CABI's existing technology infrastructure. searchRxiv enables individuals to create a DOI-stamped record of a search strategy or a search block. Fields captured include title, the search strategy, the date of the search, update dates, the review question, a description, keywords, validation information, whether the search was peer reviewed, links to publications, and database details. searchRxiv remains in active development as feedback from the user community is received. Long-term, the vision for searchRxiv is to connect it to major search platforms to enable automatic uploading to searchRxiv to improve documentation.