This search strategy is most successfully employed at the beginning of the research process as the searcher uncovers new pearls about his or her topic.
In systematic literature reviews, pearl growing is a technique used to ensure all relevant articles are included.
Pearl growing involves identifying a primary article that meets the inclusion criteria for the review.
[4] There is evidence that using pearl growing for systematic reviews is a more comprehensive approach and more likely to identify all relevant articles compared to online database searches.
[5] Pearl growing, when applied to scientific literature, may also be referred to as citation mining or snowballing.