Systematic Review Assistance

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Be Curious

What is a Systematic Review?

According to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, a systematic review attempts to collate all the empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question. It uses explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view to minimizing bias, thus providing more reliable findings from which conclusions can be drawn and decisions made.

References:
Lasserson TJ, Thomas J, Higgins JPT. Chapter 1: Starting a review [last updated August 2021]. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.5. Cochrane, 2024. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook.

Consultation and Training

Library team members are ready to assist with the following:

Provide an overview of the systematic review or scoping review process
Inform research team of SR standards (IOM, PRISMA, Cochrane)
Assist researchers with resources to help formulate a research question
Provide overview of Covidence for review management
Suggesting databases for searching

Support as a consultant on search strategy development (Research team is responsible for building, performing, and translating searches across databases)
Providing training on EndNote for management of citations
Instruct on obtaining full text articles access through library collection and ILL if necessary

Librarians will consult with your team and advise on areas as defined above. Because systematic reviews and scoping reviews are a time-intensive team process that may take a year or longer, our team of librarians are unable to provide searching and methodology services at this time.

Need assistance?

Librarians are available to consult and train on multiple aspects of advanced reviews, including systematic reviews and scoping reviews.
Systematic Reviews and scoping reviews are a time-intensive team process, because of this our team of librarians are unable to provide searching and methodology services at this time.
Librarians will consult with your team and advise on areas as defined above. This support may also include 1-2 meetings.