Evidence summaries and systematic reviews

The research question

In order to develop the research question, the research librarians contribute by

• Ensuring that no commenced or recently performed review articles exist on the same subject.
• Reviewing the research question to make sure that it can be answered with research literature.

Literature search

At this stage, the research librarians contribute to developing search strategies in order to retrieve literature relevant for the research question. More specifically, we can help you with:

• Selecting relevant bibliographic databases
• Developing and customizing search strategies
• Documenting the search strategy, both flow chart and search history
• Doing citation search on the basis of selected hits
• Downloading the hits in a preferred format, removing duplicates
• Saving the search also in order to run it later, if needed
• Creating "alerts" for relevant search terms (notifications via email) 

Review of hits

The number of hits in a systematic review can be reviewed in several ways and in several formats. Usually you begin by reviewing titles and abstracts, before examining the full text of your relevant articles. We deliver the search results as you wish, either as an excel file or as EndNote files that can be uploaded to your software program.

HVL has access to the screening tool DestillerSR for analyzes of data.

We can also offer guidance in using the screening tool Rayyan. 

Analyzes

The essence of the review article is your analysis, the research librarians are normally not involved in this part of the work.

Reporting and publishing

For some types of review articles, it is required that searches must be performed by librarians or information specialists. In these cases, the librarian should be included as co-authors of your review. We contribute to the method section of the review article in terms of describing how the search was done.

Many journals require that review articles are performed according to a reporting standard, the most common in health sciences being  PRISMA. Therefore, we recommend that you check in advance whether your preferred journals operate with any requirements in this regard.

In order for us to help you, you need to:

• Have a project plan with a narrow research question
• Have sufficient knowledge about methods for systematic reviews
• Have at your disposal at least 3 key research articles that meet the inclusion criteria of your study 

During the process

we will be in touch with you regarding

• the results of our searches
• your search terms (and whether they need to be adjusted)
• further limitations, if needed

Contact us

As a HVL researcher you are welcome to contact Marianne or Gøril when you are about to start writing a knowledge summary or a systematic review article.