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Description: Abstract Objectives: To identify and scope the breadth of electronic databases used by child welfare researchers who wanted to conduct systematic reviews on the broad topic of residential care. Study design: Methodological study Methods: Google Scholar search conducted on September 27, 2020 using keywords relative to children, state care and “systematic review”. Eligibility assessment of the 100 first search results and manual extraction of all electronic databases study authors report searching. Results: 100 records were screened for inclusion based on titles alone, of which 55 were selected for full-text assessment. Of these 55 records, 19 were excluded on full-text assessment. Included records were published from 2007 to 2020. Eleven (n=11) records were published in Children and Youth Services Review, three (n=3) in the British Journal of Social Work, two (n=2) in the Campbell database of systematic reviews, three (n=3) in Child and Family Social Work, two (n=2) in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, two (n=2) in Trauma, Violence, and Abuse and a further thirteen (n=13) were published in unique journals. Authors of the 36 included records reported searching from 2 to 26 electronic databases. A total of 97 unique electronic databases were searched by study authors. The 10 most commonly used electronic databases were: PsycInfo (31 studies), Medline (21 studies), CINAHL (14 studies), ERIC (14 studies), Social services abstracts (11 studies), ASSIA (9 studies), The Cochrane library (9 studies), Scopus (9 studies), Pubmed (8 studies) and Embase (8 studies). Limitations: Records found with the Google Scholar search may not always fit standard definitions of systematic reviews despite use of the keyword “systematic review”; for instance some reviews may not include quality assessments of studies included for analysis and their searches may not be reproducible at all. The Google Scholar search was meant to be highly sensitive but its structure (a mixture of imbricated Boolean operators) may have excluded a number of relevant systematic reviews. Results should not be considered exhaustive. Similarly, focusing on the first 100 search results may have led to the exclusion of relevant records and top search records may differ from lower-ranked records in various ways. Funding: No funding was received for this work. Registration and study protocol: See https://osf.io/vmy3x/ (27 sept 2020). Data and materials: See https://osf.io/2aw3z/. All other data should otherwise be included within this manuscript. Keywords: Electronic databases, systematic review, residential care, children’s homes, child welfare