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title: "10.2.6 Searching for the evidence"
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Scoping reviews should have an explicit, comprehensive and transparent literature search that must attempt to identify all the available evidence sources. The conduct and reporting of a scoping review search align with those undertaken in systematic reviews. For further information, refer to Section 2.4 within this manual. Grey literature and scoping reviews Grey literature is discussed within  2.4.6.1 of the JBI Manual ; however, there is more opportunity for scoping reviews to include grey literature in comparison to systematic reviews, and it can ensure a comprehensive approach to searching across the topic landscape. Grey literature is particularly useful in emerging fields, where peer-reviewed articles may be limited, but opinion pieces, news articles or blog posts, which can be quickly disseminated, may be more prominent. Grey literature can include academic papers (such as theses and dissertations), trial registries, research and committee reports, government reports, manuals/handbooks, conference papers, ongoing research and websites, among other sources. Grey literature searching is worthwhile and necessary for many scoping reviews. However, the process of searching for grey literature is poorly understood and reported. Grey literature is also not necessarily organised or indexed like peer-reviewed articles. Therefore, before committing to grey literature searching, consider the following: To answer the review question, do you need to perform grey literature searching? What kind of data will you obtain from grey literature searching, and will this be valuable for your review? What skills and knowledge do your team have to be able to perform grey literature searching? How will your team transparently track the grey literature searching? What software resources do your team have access to for grey literature searching? By considering these questions, you can develop a grey literature search that is sensitive and specific to the resources that you have and to the question that you need to answer. During your protocol development, it will be important to plan your grey literature search. Consider the following: What grey literature search databases or platforms will you search? What websites will you search? In the case of searching Google or Google Scholar, where you may be faced with millions of results, you may need to put in place a procedure for deciding how many records will be screened. Furthermore, it is recommended that if you are using Google or Google Scholar to search, then ‘incognito’ mode should be chosen so that previous search histories do not influence the findings How will you know whether you have searched enough? Having a procedure in place during your protocol stage will stop  ad hoc  decision-making during your search and allow for the process to be transparent and comprehensive.