Systematic & Scoping Reviews

The systematic and scoping review team works to connect Western faculty researchers with librarians, who partner as co-authors in the planning, execution and writing of knowledge syntheses. 
 
Having a librarian on your team is recommended, or required, by many organizations that fund and oversee systematic reviews such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institute of Medicine and the Cochrane Collaboration. A librarian on your team could also lead to higher quality search strategies and improve the quality of the review.  

As a member of the research team, the librarian will:

• Be included in research team meetings  
• Participate in the preparation of the protocol and finalize for registration
• Design expert search strategies and execute literature searches following the appropriate methodological framework and reporting guidelines  
• Export results into Covidence or provide RIS files  
• Update searches as appropriate  
• Write the search methodology for the review manuscript  
• Contribute to edits and manuscript revisions  
• Receive co-authorship on the manuscript – following the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship  

Who is eligible? 

This collaboration is exclusive for current faculty members affiliated with Western University. 

What projects are eligible?

Projects must be faculty-led projects, and can be: 

• Systematic reviews 
• Scoping reviews

What projects are not eligible?

• Background searches 
• Student assignments 
• Theses or dissertations
• Student research projects for course work or degree requirements  
• Evaluation or peer review of search strategies  

Note: Due to the time-intensive nature of this work, librarians may only participate in a few projects at a time and may not be immediately available to join your project. When a librarian is at capacity, a new timeline may be negotiated, the work may be reassigned to another librarian or your request will be queued, or it may simply not be taken up by our team. There may be projects that fall out of the scope of our service altogether.  

Submit An Application