Scope of the Database
Searches for the database are limited to English language papers dating from 1985. The database does however contain a small number of key references identified by the RURU team that pre-date this period.
Papers are drawn from the health care, education, social care and criminal justice sectors. Given the vast scale of potentially relevant references in the health care literature, searches in this sector are currently restricted to:
• Empirical reviews and overviews
• Studies of large-scale or multi-site UK initiatives, including:
• North Thames Purchaser-Led Implementation Projects programme
• PACE – Promoting Action on Clinical Effectiveness
• Facts
• Front-Line Evidence-Based Medicine Project.
For the health care field, certain kinds of empirical study, as well as conceptual and background papers, are thus currently excluded from the RURU database. RURU is examining ways of making available key papers from the health care field that this strategy omits.