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Systematic Reviews

Systematic Review Services

Welcome

The University of Maryland Libraries’ Systematic Review Team support all students, faculty, and staff affiliated with the UMD College Park campus and The Universities at Shady Grove (USG) campus (from any of the universities at USG). Our services are free of charge and include workshops, customized guest lectures and course support, faculty collaboration and project support, and one-on-one consultations on all aspects of systematic review research and teaching.

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Are you embarking on a systematic review project?

Librarians at the UMD Libraries are expert searchers and offer a systematic review service to faculty, students and research staff. We are available to guide and collaborate with researchers on the following tasks:

  • Choose the best review methodology to fit your timeline, question scope and discipline
  • Suggest relevant databases for searching the scholarly and grey literature
  • Design complex search strategies for specific databases
  • Use citation management software for organizing references (e.g. Zotero and Endnote)
  • Use article screening and selection tools (e.g. Rayyan)​

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Levels of systematic review service

  • Tier 1: General consulting - we offer assistance to researchers interested in how to do a regular literature review. In a one hour in-person consultation, we will provide a basic overview of the systematic review process such as developing a protocol, designing a search strategy, selecting relevant databases, collecting and organizing studies, screening the results and writing the manuscript.
  • Tier 2: Credit given as acknowledgement - at this level, we offer assistance in generating key terms, creating search strings for specific databases, and/or reviewing search strings created by the researcher. The researcher should acknowledge the librarian in the final publication.
  • Tier 3: Credit given as co-authorship - at this level, we develop the search strategy, execute the searching in various databases, manage the studies and prepare them for screening by the researcher and write any portion of the search methodology. The researcher should agree to include the librarian as a middle author. 

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Further reading about librarian's contributions to systematic reviews

Workshops

We offer systematic review workshops tailored to specific aspects of the review process.

For faculty only: To request an instruction session for your class or a workshop for your department, please fill out the Systematic Review Workshop Request form.

If you have any other questions about this service, please write to us at systrev@umd.edu 

 

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