Librarian involvement in systematic reviews, scoping reviews and other knowledge syntheses

According to the Cochrane Collaboration, the time required to complete a systematic review varies widely. Research teams should allow for an average of 12 months from initial consultation to production of the final manuscript.

In our experience, scoping reviews can take longer (up to 3-4 years). This will depend on the subject area, the nature and complexity of the question, and the team's size and familiarity with the methodology.

If you would like to find out if a librarian is available for collaboration, please submit your draft protocol by email to your liaison librarian.

Depending on capacity, the nature of the project and the timeline, librarian involvement may take the form of collaboration and co-authorship, or it may take the form of methodological guidance and support with data collection (aka comprehensive searching). This will be discussed at the initial consultation. Teams with clearly written protocols will be prioritized.

The purpose of the initial meeting is to:

• Discuss and clarify the refined research question, which will be the basis of the knowledge synthesis

• Establish that no relevant up-to-date knowledge synthesis of sufficient quality currently exists or is in process

• Discuss relevant articles

• Discuss:

  • search parameters such as inclusion/exclusion criteria and justifications for limits (e.g., publication date)
  • databases to be searched
  • inclusion of grey literature and other sources 
  • responsibilities for recording of numbers for PRISMA diagram
  • record management strategy
  • how results will be passed to research team

• Agree on timeline

There are many steps to conducting a systematic review; more information about the process can be found on our guide.

Researchers conducting biomedical knowledge syntheses may wish to consult the ICMJE statement on “Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors” for more information or clarification.

Note: A librarian who accepts responsibility for the steps marked with an asterisk (*) below should be offered co-authorship of the final publication. The librarian may accept or decline co-authorship at their discretion.

For more limited involvement, an offer to acknowledge the librarian may be made. The librarian may accept or decline the acknowledgment at their discretion.

Librarians may be involved in any or all of the following steps in the knowledge synthesis process:

1. Formulating a suitable research question
2. Checking for the existence of published or in-process knowledge synthesis on the same topic
3. * Designing the search strategies and arranging for peer review
4. * Running searches in appropriate bibliographic databases
5. Providing guidance on searching the grey literature
6. Providing citations for all search results in agreed upon format
7. * Participating in compiling the PRISMA flow diagram
8. Re-running the search to retrieve newly published information
9. * Writing the methods section of the resulting manuscript
10. * Reviewing the final manuscript