The Evidence Synthesis Service at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is temporarily paused until the end of January 2025. This pause allows our librarians to ensure that we continue to deliver the highest quality support to ongoing research projects. Explore our website for helpful resources during this pause, including the newly updated video tutorials on systematic searches.
Comprehensive searches are time-intensive and each librarian can work on a limited number of reviews. Librarian participation may be delayed or unavailable if we are at capacity.
Scope of Assistance
Librarians can collaborate with you to determine how we are best able to support an evidence synthesis research project.
Librarian Roles
- Translate research question into appropriate search strategy framework [PICO; PEO; PCC; SPIDER]
- Assist with search strategy
- Guidance on bibliographic organization tools
- Guidance with selecting relevant reporting guidelines/standards
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Manuscript and protocol preparation (coauthored projects only)
- Provide search methods writeup
- Develop search history appendix
- Review full manuscript
Library Staff Support (coauthored projects only)
- Retrieve full-text articles
- Covidence review initiation
Levels of Librarian Collaboration
Researcher Self-Guided
Librarian role:
- Provide researcher teams with resources for conducting evidence synthesis projects
Lead author/primary contact can expect to:
- Access resources for self-guided evidence synthesis development
Librarian Consultation
Librarian role:
- Meet with the lead researcher/primary contact (first author) and group leader/PI (last author) (BOTH must be current faculty, staff, or student whose primary affiliation is at YSM, YSPH, YSN, or YNHH)
- Peer review comprehensive search developed by researcher
Lead author/primary contact can expect to:
- Provide librarian with completed search for peer review and 'Search Methods' section in the evidence synthesis protocol
Librarian Collaboration
Librarian collaboration satisfies ICJME criteria for coauthorship. Coauthorship is expected when the librarian is a collaborator on all evidence-synthesis projects.
Note: Student evidence synthesis projects and Yale-led Professional Society evidence synthesis projects will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Librarian role:
- Meet with the lead researcher/primary contact (first author) and group leader/PI (last author) (BOTH must be current faculty, staff, or student whose primary affiliation is at YSM, YSPH, YSN, or YNHH)
- Develop search and iterations in consultation with research team
- Deduplicate search results and upload into screening tool
- Assist with obtaining full-text articles
- Write the search methods section for the protocol and final manuscript
- Provide information for manuscript acknowledgement noting support from library staff
- Review manuscript prior to submissions
Lead author/primary contact can expect to:
- Sign Memorandum of Understanding before librarian work commences
- Include the librarian as a coauthor on the protocol, final manuscript, and all research outputs resulting from this project (e.g. posters and conference papers)
- Provide librarian with detailed research protocol
- Provide at least four gold standard articles – articles that would be included in the review
- Include manuscript acknowledgement noting support from library staff