Systematic and Scoping Review Service

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis faculty, students and staff are eligible for Becker Library review search services. There is no fee for this service but you may need to budget funds for articles not accessible through Becker library.

We will work with your team to design and report thorough search strategies based on guidelines and standards set forth by PRISMA. We will also provide:

1. Detailed search strategies
2. Citation library of de-duplicated results (EndNote or RIS format)
3. Access to a Covidence account (optional)
4. Excel workbook of search results (optional)
5. Methods section regarding search design and implementation according to PRISMA
6. Data required for generating a PRISMA flow diagram

A complete systematic or scoping review project from searching through screening, to creating a manuscript can take as long as 18 months. The searching component can take anywhere from two to six weeks depending on the research question and the complexity of the search strategy. Your project librarian can give you a more accurate estimate of the time required to complete the search component after you have submitted the search request form. 

To fill out the Review Search Request Form, you will need:

1. To have already conducted a preliminary search.
2. A list of all members of your project team. We highly recommend assembling a team of at least three reviewers to screen and analyze results.
3. A brief summary of your research question.
4. Inclusion and exclusion criteria.
5. A minimum of three example articles (benchmark articles). These articles should meet your inclusion criteria and likely be included in your analysis.
6. An approximate timeline/deadline for completion of the systematic review project.

According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, authorship should be based on the following four criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The project librarian’s contribution to your systematic or scoping review project typically meets ICMJE authorship criteria. The librarian will provide a comprehensive description of the search methods and complete search strategies that can be included in the manuscript (as required by PRISMA reporting standards), and will also build the citation library. Please discuss any authorship questions or concerns with your project librarian.

Investigators submitting requests for comprehensive literature searches for projects with grant funding are expected to include library efforts in the grant as an unpaid expert consultant.

We do not provide full-text article retrieval as part of our systematic or scoping review service. However, your librarian can show project members the process for retrieving full text and can assist with locating difficult-to-find resources. Our Full-Text Retrieval guide outlines how to retrieve full-text articles and how to save time by optimizing EndNote to automatically pull articles available from Becker library’s journal collection.