Our Services
The library offers training, walk-in hours, and individual support to help research staff (including PhD candidates), clinicians, and students undertaking (systematic) literature reviews or needing a thorough literature search for other purposes.
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Training
Our training materials and walk-in hours are open to both staff and students. During the workshop “Search strategies for Systematic & Scoping Reviews (health / (bio)medical sciences)” we will discuss the requirements a search strategy for a systematic or scoping review should meet and how you can develop a good quality search strategy for your review.
We offer online walk-in support hours every Friday 10-11am via this Zoom-link.
Self-study modules
We also offer a number of self-study modules, such as Advanced Literature Search, Searching PubMed, Searching Embase, A Guide to Grey Literature and Screening with ASReview. More modules will be added soon.
Individual support | Staff only
All individual support options start with a free online intake meeting and can be requested using the webform below. More information of the levels of individual support offered can be found below under Individual support options. We aim to respond to support requests within one working week. If you haven’t received a response two weeks after submission, please contact us via Ask Your Librarian.
Individual support options
Basic support is free of charge. Extended and outsourced support are subject to charges. We will provide an overview of the exact costs on request. Please find below more details on the various support options.
Basic
1 intake meeting (1 hour) to discuss
- Research question, review type, eligibility criteria;
- Database selection;
- Setup initial search for 1 database of choice;
- Review process in general.
1-2 follow-up consults (~30 minutes) to fine tune the search for the first database.
1 follow-up consult (~30 minutes) to advise on translation to other databases.
1 round of written feedback on translations.
Optional:
- Consult (1 hour) to advise on grey literature searching and/or handsearching.
- Help with peer-review feedback related to the search strategy.
Benefits & drawbacks
Requires a good basic understanding of systematic searching (e.g. use our training opportunities) as there are limited feedback and optimisation opportunities.
Available for
- All research staff including PhD candidates
- Clinical staff
Free of charge
Mention library support in acknowledgments.
Extended
Everything listed under “Basic” plus
- Additional consults to fine-tune searches across all databases.
- Exporting & deduplicating search results.
- Final search strategy write-up for publication.
- Help with full text retrieval (post-tiab-screening).
Benefits & drawbacks
Essentially co-developing your search strategy with an information specialist. High confidence in quality of overall search strategy, saves time and you still learn how this works.
Available for
- All research staff, including PhD candidates
- Clinical staff
Price upon request
Mention library support in acknowledgments or co-authorship.
Outsourced
1 intake meeting (1 hour) to discuss
- Research question, review type, eligibility criteria;
- Database selection;
- Setup initial search for 1 database of choice;
- Review process in general.
Information specialist prepares preliminary search for one database.
Information specialist finetunes search based on customer feedback (email or consult).
Once approved, Information specialist translates search across databases.
Exporting & deduplicating search results
Final search strategy write-up for publication.
Benefits & drawbacks
Fastest way to a search strategy meeting international criteria.
Available for
- All research staff, excluding PhD candidates
- Clinical staff
Price upon request
Mention library support in acknowledgments or co-authorship.
Systematic review support request form
Background
Academic reviews serve as a solid basis as to establish the latest state of affairs on a specific topic. Authors of scoping reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses should aim to include all available relevant studies. The systematic literature search therefore needs to be of the highest quality.
Strict guidelines for literature search are laid out in the Prisma Statements, Cochrane Handbook, JBI Reviewer’s Handbook and PRESS process in the PRESS statement. These guidelines dictate that, at the very least, two databases need to be searched with a highly sensitive and complete search strategy.
The UM Library Information specialists are experts in the efficient execution of systematic literature searches. Research indicates that support by an information specialist increases the quality of the literature search and reporting of the search (Meert et al., 2016; Roffel, 2015; Rethlefsen et al.,2015).
“Librarians bring expertise to the review process based on their understanding of the medical literature, search methods, and review guidelines and standards. Their neutrality and expertise can help minimize bias in the review process, leading to more robust and unbiased review articles”
Rethlefsen, Murad & Livingston (in JAMA, 2014, p. 1000)
Testimonials
After many fights with PubMed and other search engines, we got great help to solve our issues and to make our search more comprehensive.
Unfortunately, not all PubMed-fights could be resolved but I’m still more confident about the search that we ended up with!
It is recommendable to consult the library when starting a systematic review.
The librarian gave me some very practical tips, for example using EndNote and posed some critical questions that made my approach much more robust and easier to reproduce.
At the end of my scoping study, I presented it again to the librarian. I found his tips and assessment of my work, in a relatively short time, very valuable.
The librarian came to the rescue by suggesting some useful ways of tracing relevant publications (snowballing) but also helped me brush up on my search strategy and offered tips on making it more efficient.
