Using the key search descriptors, we identified 1078 records. Through hand searches of the reference lists of the initially retained records, 60 additional records were found and assessed adding up to 1138 identified records in total. We screened 1084 records of which 989 were deemed irrelevant. Altogether 95 reports were retrieved and assessed in full text including the 60 records identified through reference searching, and finally 24 reports were included.

The choice was taken to narrow the scope of our review, but we acknowledge that we may have missed relevant information on how students‘ acquire research experiences from their thesis work. Even though the time span of our scope was more than 20 years and included a wide range of health professions, we found only 24 studies that matched our criteria. The updated search revealed no new articles published during the two years from the first to the updated search.