UNL Libraries provide support to researchers conducting advanced reviews, which includes systematic reviews, scoping reviews, meta-analytic reviews, rapid reviews and others. Our team can support both research and teaching with:
A selection of workshops with essential skills for campus, courses, and research teams
Tailored instruction and training for a variety of audiences
Researcher collaboration at a range of levels from one-on-one consultations to co-authorship
To learn more about advanced reviews and find online guidance and resources, you can visit our Advanced Reviews guide.
Types of Support
The UNL Libraries Support Team for Advanced Reviews is available to help UNL-affiliates teaching and conducting advanced reviews. We offer varying levels of support in multiple modalities. The Institute of Medicine recommends that a librarian or information specialist be involved in the systematic review process. In fact, this study published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology shows that librarian involvement in systematic reviews improves both the quality and the reproducibility of the literature search.
Levels, areas of support, and amount of time spent on each request are at the discretion of the individual support team member and based on availability and expertise.
Research Support
Support team members provide research support for faculty, graduate students, and research teams at the following levels:
Consultation Level
At the consultation level, team members can provide up to 3 hours of their time, in-person or virtual consultation either with individuals or with a full research team with followup emails.
During these consultations, we will cover:
- The differences between advanced review types and the appropriateness of one or the other for the research team’s needs.
- The overall review process along with methodological standards and best practices, including:
- Protocol development
- Research question frameworks
- Search strategy design
- Database selection
- Gray literature searching
- Tools for review and/or citation management
Collaboration Level
At the collaboration level, support team members can provide up to 8 hours of support (at the support team member's discretion). During this time, we can provide multiple in-person or virtual consultations either with individuals or with a research team and provide troubleshooting and advising via email.
Consultation offerings include:
Assisting with generating key terms
Creating and refining search strings for specific databases
Troubleshooting search strategies for precision and sensitivity
Translating search strings between multiple databases
At this level, the support team member will not write a full search strategy, but will serve in an advisory role OR may provide a peer review of the search strategy in alignment with PRESS guidelines.
At the team member’s discretion, we may also provide support in training for tools like Zotero, Covidence, and Rayyan and assist with protocol development and registration in a repository like PROSPERO or Open Science Framework.
For this level of support, we request acknowledgment in the published review.
Co-author Level
Librarian co-authorship is available subject to librarian availability and interest. At this level, the librarian will:
Write the search strategy in collaboration with the research team
Translate the search for all necessary databases
Run the searches, documenting throughout for the PRISMA flow diagram
They may also provide citation management and other tool training and support.
Librarian co-authors will additionally facilitate registering a protocol, write appropriate portions of the methods section, and complete a PRISMA checklist prior to article submission.
At the co-authorship level, the research team should agree to include the librarian as a co-author.
If you'd like to discuss bringing a librarian on to your team as a co-author, contact us at library-star@unl.edu.
Training & Workshops
Support team members provide training materials, workshops and in-class support for instructors and groups affiliated with UNL.
Levels of Support
Campus | College/Dept | Course | Research Teams & Labs |
| Provide training materials | Provide training materials | Provide training materials | Provide training materials |
| Develop new training materials | Develop new training materials | Develop new training materials/ asynchronous support | Develop new training materials |
| Provide workshops (virtual or in person) | Provide workshops (virtual or in person) | Single class visit | Provide workshops (virtual or in person) |
| Multiple class visits | One-on-one training | ||
| Co-teach |
Presentation Topics
Available presentation topics include, but are not limited to:
- Differentiating between different types of reviews.
- Developing advanced review research questions and frameworks.
- Searching comprehensively.
- Sharing the stages in the process.
- Developing a protocol.
- Screening strategies.
- Identifying high-impact non-predatory journals.
- Using Covidence, Zotero or Rayyan.
To request a training or workshop on advanced reviews, contact us at library-star@unl.edu.
Librarian Roles
Librarian involvement is crucial for a quality review. Support team members are trained experts in advanced review methodologies and are able to work with you throughout the review process. Our librarians can help with:
You'll notice I changed some of the beginning text to get away from excessive duplicate word usage. This is the resource I use when setting up bulleted lists if you want to review. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/presenting-bulleted-lists/ (specifically #4 and #6 for this list)
I marked some things below as possible duplicates or considerations for combining to shorten the list slightly.
- Finding guidelines and journal requirements
- Discovering existing reviews on the topic
- Identifying high-impact non-predatory journals for publication
- Advising on additional stages of the project
- Conducting exploratory searching on the topic to help determine the feasibility of the project
- Discovering databases
- Identifying search terms and controlled vocabularies
- Creating search alerts
- Writing portions of the methods section of the manuscript
- Aiding in the development of research questions using appropriate advanced review frameworks
- Troubleshooting search strategies
- Assisting with the PRISMA flow diagram
- Providing and aiding in completing the PRISMA checklist
- De-duplicating results
- Registering the protocol
- Peer reviews and the search strategy
- Writing the search strategy
Do these have similar meanings?
- Identifying the appropriate review methodology
- Determining the best tools for the review
Are these similar to combine or do we need to clarify differences?
- Running the search strategy in all databases
- Translating search strategies for individual databases
Is the below the same?
- Identifying gray literature sources
- Searching for gray literature