Abstract
Objective:While many librarians have been asked to participate in systematic reviews with researchers, often these researchers are not familiar with the systematic review process or the appropriate role for librarians. The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and barriers that librarians face when collaborating on systematic reviews. To take a wider view of the whole process of collaborating on systematic reviews, the authors deliberately focused on interpersonal and methodological issues other than searching itself.Methods:To characterize the biggest challenges that librarians face while collaborating on systematic review projects, we used a web-based survey. The thirteen-item survey included seventeen challenges grouped into two categories: methodological and interpersonal. Participants were required to indicate the frequency and difficulty of the challenges listed. Open-ended questions allowed survey participants to describe challenges not listed in the survey and to describe strategies used to overcome challenges.Results:Of the 17 challenges listed in the survey, 8 were reported as common by over 40% of respondents. These included methodological issues around having too broad or narrow research questions, lacking eligibility criteria, having unclear research questions, and not following established methods. The remaining challenges were interpersonal, including issues around student-led projects and the size of the research team. Of the top 8 most frequent challenges, 5 were also ranked as most difficult to handle. Open-ended responses underscored many of the challenges included in the survey and revealed several additional challenges.Conclusions:These results suggest that the most frequent and challenging issues relate to development of the research question and general communication with team members. Clear protocols for collaboration on systematic reviews, as well as a culture of mentorship, can help librarians prevent and address these challenges.
Highlights
Systematic reviews are an increasingly common research method used to compile and analyze large sets of existing study data from different sources
After we developed a pilot survey based on our experiences, the survey was pretested for face validity by six health sciences librarians who were experienced in systematic reviews from New York University, the University of Iowa, the University of Maryland–Baltimore, and Weill Cornell Medical College
A small portion reported working on searches alone as opposed to being involved in more steps in the systematic review process
Summary
Systematic reviews are an increasingly common research method used to compile and analyze large sets of existing study data from different sources. Systematic reviews were used to answer questions of effectiveness related to treatment or diagnosis of conditions. This methodology has been expanded and used for an ever-increasing range of topics both within and outside of health care [1, 4], such as feasibility or Journal of the Medical Library Association appropriateness of care [5], crime and justice [6], and software engineering [7]. The Cochrane Collaboration, the National Academy of Medicine (formerly, Institute of Medicine), and the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, among others, have put out guidelines for researchers to follow when embarking on a systematic review All of these guidelines either require or recommend collaborating with an experienced librarian to create a proper search strategy and help manage the methods [4, 9, 10]
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