Inclusion of librarians and information professionals in Canadian knowledge synthesis grant funding.

Abstract

Librarians continually advocate for the expertise they can bring to knowledge synthesis research projects. Professional associations like the Canadian Health Libraries Association aim to promote librarians and information professionals as partners in health research. This push for representation must happen at a policy level to enact change. To that purpose, we explored the degree to which the inclusion of librarians and information professionals is represented at the funding level by healthcare research organizations in Canada. We used a list of health research funding agencies generated from Scopus searches and an independent search of Canadian health research institutions, governmental health authorities, professional associations, and research-oriented universities to identify research grants designed for knowledge synthesis research. We examined these grants to determine whether they require or specifically mention librarians in their eligibility criteria. Of the 14 knowledge synthesis grants we identified, only one required a health librarian as a member of the research team in the grant eligibility criteria. Four grants "strongly recommended" the inclusion of librarians on the research team, though this inclusion was not a contingency for funding. Most knowledge synthesis grants in Canada do not require, recommend, or mention librarians as members of the research or authorship team. Evidence suggests that librarian involvement substantially improves the quality of knowledge synthesis research projects; it would therefore benefit both librarians and knowledge synthesis work to advocate for librarian involvement as a contingency for grant funding.