Systematic Reviews & Evidence Synthesis Methods

The Institute of Medicine recommends that a librarian or information specialist be involved in the systematic review process. In fact, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology shows that librarian involvement in systematic reviews improves both the quality and the reproducibility of the literature search.

UC Irvine's Evidence Synthesis Service can help you:

• Find existing evidence syntheses and protocols to inform your own protocol development.
• Identify relevant databases and grey literature resources in which to conduct literature searches related to your topic.
• Design and implement complex, comprehensive search strategies to maximize retrieval of relevant studies.
• Create search alerts to ensure that new studies are found while the evidence synthesis is in progress.
• Use citation management software, such as Endnote, Zotero, and Mendeley to manage the study gathering and selection process.
• Understand how to retrieve full-text articles, and track down hard-to-find full text articles for screening and review.
• Write the methods section of your review for publication, to ensure clarity and transparency of the search process.

The Evidence Synthesis Service at UCI Libraries focuses on consulting. If a librarian is interested in getting more involved in your project, they may also be a co-author (see more about that in the boxes at the bottom of this page), but that is up to the capacity of each individual librarian.

Consultant

As a consultant, a librarian can step in at different points of your evidence synthesis review. Librarians can:

• provide background information and resources on the evidence synthesis process,
• recommend databases, protocol registration platforms, and citation management software, and
• suggest edits for your search strategy.

This option is a limited time commitment.

Instruction

If appropriate, a librarian may also provide a workshop to a small team or cohort. Workshop content can be worked out between the librarian and coordinator, and may include outlining the basics of evidence synthesis, the basics of developing a search strategy, or how to search for grey literature, for example.

Co-author

Co-authoring is a more substantial commitment, as a librarian will typically devote more than a year to partner with you on your evidence synthesis review. Co-authorship is not part of UCI Libraries Evidence Synthesis Service, but at the discretion of the librarian.

If a librarian has capacity and interest to co-author, the librarian will be more hands-on and can:

• comment on the protocol,
• select databases and grey literature resources,
• write the search strategy,
• translate searches to syntax of all databases,
• perform searches and export them to citation management software,
• perform deduplication, or train your team on the process,
• set up in article screening software, and
• write a portion of the methods section specific to searching.

See the "Librarian as Co-author: Tasks and Timelines" box below to learn more.

If a librarian has capacity and interest they can be heavily involved in the evidence synthesis process, however it is recommended that the disciplinary experts on the author team manage certain steps that require specific content-area and quantitative methods expertise. Librarians who write the search methodology section of the synthesis should be included as a co-author. Librarians who collaborate on search strategy formation and/or citation management should be acknowledged in the final publication. See Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors to learn more about the role of authors and contributors.

An evidence synthesis review will typically require a year or more to complete, and librarians’ availability may vary, so please plan ahead and reach out to us as early as you can.

Below is a detailed chart that breaks down the steps of a traditional evidence synthesis review and the librarian co-author’s potential contributions.

Note: these time estimates may vary depending on the project, and some steps may happen concurrently.

* Timeframe can vary significantly depending on number of citations identified for screening.

This guide was adapted from Cornell University Library's A Guide to Evidence Synthesis and the University of Minnesota Library's Systematic review and evidence synthesis services webpage. Throughout this guide, there are links to numerous other resources compiled by other librarians or researchers. We are grateful for their incredible work in creating such detailed content that follows the process of working through evidence synthesis in such a structured way.