Background:
Evidence-based policy is a term often applied in various field of public health including tobacco control policy. Strengthening evidence -based tobacco control policy development should also base on reliable evidence, in particular research approach. The coverage of tobacco control research under WHO FCTC guidelines is crucial issues.

Methods:
A systematic literature review was conducted for identifying the gaps in tobacco control research. The search for relevant publications was done by the search engine. The key inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined, focusing on published original article conducting in Thai context, both English and Thai language in the past 5 years. The quality of articles was assessed. The text of articles was analyzed based on WHO FCTC articles, at totally 15 articles as well as the 2^nd National Strategic Plan for Tobacco Control 2015 - 2019.

Results:
The initial search resulted in 1,048 abstracts. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria for two rounds, 176 original articles were selected for the review. In the article reviewed, the most of WHO FCTC articles applying into the research conceptual framework was article 20 (63.1%) with the purpose of gain new knowledge on tobacco harms and effects on health and cross sectional survey design for surveillance tobacco use among various groups. The rest of articles were focused on research related WHO FCTC article 12 (31.0%) and article 14 (19.3%). Three articles did not conducted as a research framework, articles 5.3, 9 - 10 and 19. However, those resulted were implemented in specific area, setting and target groups that's not applicable for scaling up.

Conclusions:
The successful transformation of research results to effective tobacco control policy under WHO FCTC depends on various issuers, especially time-based for conducting the research that sufficient to prove the project outcome and appropriate budget for comprehensive research design, coverage target area and population.