Systematic Reviews

Graduate students are often required to conduct a systematic review as part of their dissertation/thesis. These types of reviews differ from a typical literature review for a paper as this review must go beyond finding a few articles to reference in your paper. Instead, this review seeks to identify ALL studies that meet a set of inclusion criteria and provide an in-depth analysis of the research.

Librarians with expert searching skills are available to assist graduate students in developing  effective search strategies for comprehensive reviews such as systematic reviews, scoping reviews, integrative reviews, etc.  

Depending on the research question, number of databases and available librarian time, it takes around 2-3 weeks for the librarian to consult on the process.

A librarian can help you in:

• Identifying relevant databases
• Identifying relevant search terms and consulting on search strategies
• Helping with translating search strategies into databases
• Exporting search results into a citation/review manager
• Identifying sources of grey literature
• Identifying other means of finding relevant studies

To get a better sense of your project, we suggest making an appointment with a librarian. 

• Students can make an appointment here: https://muconnect.missouri.edu/
• Or you can directly email us at AskLibrary@health.missouri.edu

Before your consultation, we suggest you do the following prior to the consultation:

• Educate yourself about the type of review you will be undertaking
• Familiarize yourself with the processes involved for that type of review
• Develop a protocol/proposal for your prospective review
  • If you have already developed a protocol/proposal, provide this to the librarian you will be meeting with.
  • If you haven't already developed a protocol/proposal, take a look at how to create one. 
• If you do not already have some basic familiarity with search principles, consider viewing Finding Health Literature: Keys to Searching PubMed, CINAHL & Scopus