Table 1.

Example Medline search strategy to systematically retrieve literature on hepatitis A underreporting

Search 1a	Search Terms
Disease notification, surveillance and underreporting	Mandatory Reporting/ OR Disease Notification/ OR Contact Tracing/ OR exp Population Surveillance/ OR Public Health Informatics/ OR exp Data Collection/ OR Disclosure/ OR exp Informatics/ OR underreport$.mp. OR under-report$.mp. OR (under adj1 report$).mp. OR surveillance.mp. OR reporting.mp. OR ((reported OR true OR estimate$) adj2 (incidence OR prevalence)).mp. OR undetect$.mp. OR capture-recapture.mp. AND
Hepatitis A	Hepatitis A/ OR Hepatitis A Virus, Human/ OR Hepatitis A Antibodies/ OR “hepatitis a”.mp.
Search 2a	Search Terms
Incidence, prevalence and epidemiology	Incidence/ OR Prevalence/ OR Epidemiology/ OR Statistics & Numerical Data.fs. OR Epidemiology.fs. OR Epidemiologic Measurements/ OR Statistics as Topic/ OR Data Interpretation, Statistical/ OR incidence.mp. OR prevalence.mp. OR epidemiolog$.mp. AND
Hepatitis A	Hepatitis A/ OR Hepatitis A Virus, Human/ OR Hepatitis A Antibodies/ OR “hepatitis a”.mp. AND
Travel, non- or low-endemic countries	Travel/ OR Travel Medicine/ OR Developed Countries/ OR exp Australia/ OR exp North America/ OR New Zealand/ OR Andorra/ OR Austria/ OR Belgium/ OR Finland/ OR exp France/ OR exp Germany/ OR Gibraltar/ OR exp Great Britain/ OR Greece/ OR Iceland/ OR Ireland/ OR exp Italy/ OR Liechtenstein/ OR Luxembourg/ OR Monaco/ OR Netherlands/ OR Portugal/ OR San Marino/ OR exp Scandinavia/ OR Spain/ OR Switzerland/ OR Japan/ OR Singapore/ OR Hong Kong/ OR (non-endemic$ OR nonendemic$ OR (non adj1 endemic$) OR low-endemic$ OR (low adj1 endemic$) OR travel$ OR developed countr$ OR Australia OR North America OR Canada OR United States OR New Zealand OR Western Europe OR Andorra OR Austria OR Belgium OR Finland OR France OR Germany OR Gibraltar OR Great Britain OR England OR Scotland OR Ireland OR United Kingdom OR Wales OR Greece OR Iceland OR Italy OR Liechtenstein OR Luxembourg OR Monaco OR Netherlands OR Portugal OR San Marino OR Scandinavia OR Spain OR Switzerland OR Cyprus OR Denmark OR Norway OR Sweden OR Greenland OR Japan OR Singapore OR Hong Kong).mp.

^aSearches 1 and 2 were combined using the Boolean operator ‘or’. exp explode – includes all narrower/more specific subheadings in the search, $, allows for different endings to a word to be searched; mp multi-purpose - searches in the title and abstract as well as the subject heading, adj adjacent, fs floating subheading – facilitates a broader search (floats over all indexed subject headings)