Strategies for identifying and using diverse global health data: perspectives from data searching and meta-analyses on antimicrobial resistance

Searching for and utilizing biomedical data is an essential part of most research efforts, including in public health, and almost always involves use of major online databases. However, despite useful foundational guidance in the literature, developing and implementing unbiased and effective search strategies useful across multiple databases and sources remains challenging, with results highly dependent on the approaches used. Here, based on recent work searching for, extracting and analyzing geographically and scientifically diverse clinical and epidemiological antimicrobial resistance data, we discuss approaches we found useful to enhance each stage of the process and its outcomes. Recommendations include defining clear study goals to drive the data needs and scope, selecting appropriate databases, and creating and iteratively optimizing search terms and strategies. We also describe steps to manage the output of computerized searches, including the review of search outputs and the extraction of data, and discuss the potential use of unconventional data, including from manual searching and author queries, to supplement other available data. Taken together, the pragmatic approaches shared can help researchers enhance the yield and efficiency of their searches to produce more comprehensive, representative and useful datasets appropriate for their specific needs.