Impact of librarians on reporting of the literature searching component of pediatric systematic reviews

Abstract

Objective: A critical element in conducting a systematic review is the identification of studies. To date, very little empirical evidence has been reported on whether the presence of a librarian or information professional can contribute to the quality of the final product. The goal of this study was to compare the reporting rigor of the literature searching component of systematic reviews with and without the help of a librarian.Method: Systematic reviews published from 2002 to 2011 in the twenty highest impact factor pediatrics journals were collected from MEDLINE. Corresponding authors were contacted via an email survey to determine if a librarian was involved, the role that the librarian played, and functions that the librarian performed. The reviews were scored independently by two reviewers using a fifteen-item checklist.Results: There were 186 reviews that met the inclusion criteria, and 44% of the authors indicated the involvement of a librarian in conducting the systematic review. With the presence of a librarian as coauthor or team member, the mean checklist score was 8.40, compared to 6.61 (p,0.001) for reviews without a librarian.Conclusions: Findings indicate that having a librarian as a coauthor or team member correlates with a higher score in the literature searching component of systematic reviews.Keywords: Systematic Review, Librarian, Critical Appraisal, Literature Search, Reporting There is ample literature assessing the quality of systematic reviews across many disciplines [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], and a common theme that has emerged from a number of these studies has been the need for improving the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews. Many studies have advocated for and described various roles that librarians and information professionals could play on a review team [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Several standards and organizations also suggest that a librarian or information professional be involved in the review process [27][28][29][30]. Documents produced by the Campbell Collaboration and a recent Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Knowledge Synthesis grant competition strongly recommend that an information professional or librarian be included among the members of a review team [31,32].However, to date, there has been very little empirical evidence on whether the presence of a librarian or information professional on a systematic review team contributes to the quality of a systematic review. Golder et al. found that only a very small percentage of reviews reported their search strategy with enough detail to be reproducible, and of those with reproducible searches, nearly half employed an information professional [33]. In the same study, the authors noted that literature searches performed by information professionals tended to be carried out

Adoption of peer review of literature search strategies in knowledge synthesis from 2009 to 2018: An overview

“…Research has shown that information professionals’ involvement in a review leads to both better quality literature searches for generating a pool of candidate articles for screening and better reporting of search methods (Koffel, 2015; Meert et al, 2016; Rethlefsen et al, 2015). However, even though information professional involvement in the reviews examined here was high, several examples of incomplete and unclear reporting of search methods were encountered during this study.…”

“…This suggests that there may be a few research groups or centres that regularly incorporate peer review into their search strategies and indicate as such when reporting their research methods. Information professional involvement for the articles included in the sample-either as an author or otherwise involved in the search design-was high at approximately 90%, but as has been the case elsewhere in the literature (Meert et al, 2016;Rethlefsen et al, 2015), instances of vague reporting in some articles made it unclear whether an information professional was involved in search development and, if so, what that role entailed. Previous research examining published systematic reviews has shown that information professionals' involvement can appear to be low (Li et al, 2014;Meert et al, 2016), but it has also been demonstrated that information professionals do not always receive credit for their work in a published manuscript (Koffel, 2015).…”

“…Information professional involvement for the articles included in the sample-either as an author or otherwise involved in the search design-was high at approximately 90%, but as has been the case elsewhere in the literature (Meert et al, 2016;Rethlefsen et al, 2015), instances of vague reporting in some articles made it unclear whether an information professional was involved in search development and, if so, what that role entailed. Previous research examining published systematic reviews has shown that information professionals' involvement can appear to be low (Li et al, 2014;Meert et al, 2016), but it has also been demonstrated that information professionals do not always receive credit for their work in a published manuscript (Koffel, 2015). The same appears to be true of individuals acting as peer reviewers for the search strategy, as less than one third of the articles examined here (29.9%) acknowledged the peer reviewer by name.…”

How many sources are needed?

“…For this, they examined how often librarians were mentioned or listed as co-authors in review papers. According to the studies, librarians have influence on the review process, especially those reviews show a better reproducibility of the literature searches and more database sources are used, which is relevant with respect to completeness [20][21][22][23]. A further step recommended in all handbooks is the conduction of a test search to modify the search strategy and selection of databases at the beginning.…”

Scoping review search practices in the social sciences: A scoping review protocol

“…While the participation of LIS professionals in systematic reviews has been well studied (Aamodt et al, 2019;Meert et al, 2016;Koffel, 2015;Ross-White, 2016), scoping reviews have received less attention. Murphy & Boden (2015) found the scoping reviews were the second most common review type in which Canadian health sciences librarians had been involved.…”