Systematic Reviews
Medical librarians can partner with Duke Health faculty, staff, trainees, and students to author systematic reviews, scoping reviews, or other formal review methodology.
The Evidence Synthesis Service is a highly specialized and time-intensive service that covers systematic reviews, scoping reviews, evidence maps, and other formal review methodologies. When formal review methodologies are not needed, medical librarians are also available for general literature search requests and research consultations; for these requests you may contact medical-librarian@duke.edu.
The first step in getting started is to read the service policy and requirements below. Next, please fill out our Evidence Synthesis Literature Review Request Form to the best of your ability and send it via email to medical-librarian@duke.edu to get started.
What we offer
We will work with you to develop a comprehensive approach that meets the requirements for conducting a systematic review of the literature. Add us to your author team and we will design and manage thorough, complex searches in multiple databases. We will also provide you with:
- Covidence workspace with de-duplicated results
- Tables with detailed search strategies
- Narratives of the search methodology
- Review of the final manuscript
Additional services may be available.
Time needed
- Please contact us a minimum of 3-4 weeks before you hope to begin screening abstracts.
- The average search takes 1-2 weeks to develop. Some may be faster, others longer. Particularly complex searches, those with multiple questions, and those requiring non-standard databases take longer to develop, run, and update.
- Multiple iterations may be required to achieve the proper balance of precision and recall. We will work with you to review initial results to ensure relevance.
- At any given time, we have multiple reviews in the queue, and it may take 1-2 weeks to schedule our first consultation.
Requirements for getting started
- We require all teams to complete the Evidence Synthesis Literature Review Request Form.
This form will ask for your name, email, mentor (if applicable), Duke Health status, school / program / center, research question, PICO elements or variables of interest, inclusion and exclusion criteria, 5-10 relevant article references that meet your criteria, whether reviews exist on this topic, and more.
Service Policy
Who we work with:
- This service is available to current Duke Health faculty, staff, trainees, and students. Duke Health includes individuals with primary appointments or enrollment in School of Medicine (SOM) or School of Nursing (SON) programs, centers, or institutes, as well as trainees within the Duke University Health System.
- Evidence synthesis projects in which there are authors from many institutions will be considered if the Duke Health author is the project leader.
- We will consider society projects and guidelines on a case-by-case basis and reserve the right to decline if it is not in accordance with our other policies.
- For academic evidence synthesis projects, the librarian will work with the learner and/or the faculty member to determine what parts of the project must be completed by the student to meet the learning objectives for the academic project, and how to balance librarian expertise and contributions.
- We do not accept projects led by undergraduate or graduate students from non–SOM/SON programs. These students may collaborate on projects, but a Duke Health faculty member or trainee must serve as the project leader and primary contact with the librarian. This individual is responsible for all communication, project decisions, and co-leading meetings with the librarian.
Our role:
- Given the expertise and significant time commitment involved in this work, it is our policy that librarians' contribution be recognized with co-authorship of manuscripts when appropriate based on the ICMJE criteria for authorship and the CRediT taxonomy.
- Librarians do not serve as administrative or project coordinators.
- Librarians will not run pre-formulated searches without review and potential revision to align with professional standards. For reviews where a librarian was not previously involved, librarians may provide guidance, but the team is responsible for executing the search.
- The Library will maintain records related to a systematic review for 7 years. Research teams are responsible for complying with any data sharing or archiving policies.
Costs
- Comprehensive searches are a specialized service that are time and labor intensive.
- Fees are waived for individual faculty, staff, trainees, and students who do not have external grant funding for the research project.
- Investigators submitting requests for evidence synthesis searches for projects with external grant funding are expected to include library effort in the grant. Costs are based on librarian effort and can be covered via percentage of effort.
- Library Administration and the Associate Director for Research & Education will estimate the effort required for grant applications and other proposals.
Resources
For questions about these services, please contact Sarah Cantrell.