The following services are available from the D. Samuel Gottesman librarians to help you with your review:
Covidence
- Providing access and instruction for Covidence to assist with review tasks such as screening, quality evaluation and data extraction.
- Visit our Covidence guide and/or contact askref@einsteinmed.edu for more information.
Planning
- Referral to relevant handbooks and guidance materials.
- Referral to relevant reporting standards.
- Guidance on estimating time, manpower and other requirements for a good quality systematic review.
Protocol
- Research existing review protocols to see if there is another similar protocol in existence.
- Advise on developing the protocol and help with the literature search-related sections of the protocol.
- Provide feedback on the protocol draft prior to publication.
Literature Review
- Assist with identification of databases for searching, relevant to your systematic review topic.
- Assist with identifying the primary search concepts and translating them as needed for different databases (including identifying relevant controlled vocabulary terms and keywords).
- Translate research question into an appropriate search strategy, honing specificity and sensitivity for optimal retrieval for your review.
- Arrange for peer review of search strategies as well as verify reproducibility of search strategy retrieval.
- Execute peer-reviewed search strategies in relevant databases on behalf of SR author(s) or advise author(s) in doing so.
- Save the search strategy or strategies for follow-up, or advise in doing so.
- Advise in the use of other resources and techniques for comprehensive systematic review of the literature beyond bibliographic databases, such as grey literature, subject expert contacts, citation checking, and hand-searching.
Documentation
- Help set up (or provide for you) a spreadsheet or similar document listing the search strategies, date(s) of search(es), number of results retrieved from each database, and number of duplicates removed from the search results.
- Provide assistance with drafting a description of the literature review for the "Methods" section or narrative describing the methodology of the systematic review report(s).
- Provide help with drafting any literature search strategies appendix for report(s) or advise you on this task.
- Help identify appropriate reporting protocol(s) for your study.
Citation Management
- Assist with using citation management programs for efficient search retrieval management.
- Import search results into EndNote or other citation managers on your behalf or advise you in doing so.
- Utilize citation manager de-duplication feature on search results or advise you in using the same.
Full Text
- Provide options for accessing full text of identified studies via the library's holdings or via interlibrary loan (ILL).
