Evidence Review Services
Texas A&M University Libraries offer an assortment of evidence review services for TAMU faculty, staff, and students free of charge. Service levels vary depending on university classification and availability of librarians.
What is an "Evidence Review Service"? Learn more on the Systematic Reviews and Related Evidence Syntheses Guide.
If you are not affiliated with Texas A&M or there are no librarians available to assist you with your review, you can visit the Center for Systematic Reviews & Research Syntheses (CSRRS) which offers fee-based services for any client whose needs are not met by the Libraries’ Evidence Review Service.
To get assistance with your review project, fill out and submit our Request Review Support form. After receiving your request, one of our librarians will contact you to schedule a consultation.
Request Assistance
What do the Libraries offer?
Consultant Level Services
Consultation level services are intended for students working on assignments or faculty with quick questions. Consultations involve a limited number of meetings, and hours may be capped depending on availability of librarians and individual service requests.
Working with a librarian as a consultant may cover guidance and support on:
- Background information and resources on the systematic review process
- Selecting appropriate databases and grey literature resources to search
- Editing your search strategy
- Locating existing, relevant reviews on a topic
- Turning the research question into a search strategy
- Translating the initial search strategy across databases
- Documenting the search
- Using tools, like EndNote or Covidence
- Writing the literature search methodology section for the submitted manuscript
Co-Author Level Services
Co-authorship services are available for faculty and researchers intending to publish a final manuscript. As a co-author, a librarian can offer specialized and in-depth support through the entire review process. That support may include:
- Discuss team roles, the review question, and a timeline
- Provide guidance on the review process and protocol development
- Search for existing reviews or protocols related to the topic
- Perform a limited initial literature search to assess feasibility
- Determine level of librarian involvement (on-going discussion)
- Help refine the research question, eligibility criteria and define search concepts
- Develop and refine the initial search strategy in collaboration with the team
- Identify databases appropriate for the topic
- Translate and execute search across all databases
- Develop and execute a gray literature search strategy if applicable
- Assist in identifying key journals for handsearching or table of contents browsing
- Provide citation chaining of included articles (backward citation chaining is sometimes called ancestry searching or bibliography)
- Compile and remove duplicate citations
- Provide top-level numbers for the PRISMA flow diagram
- Transfer citations to team for review
- Provide full-text articles through Get It For Me services
- Assist with obtaining "hard to find" full-text articles
- Assist in identifying an appropriate target journal for publication of protocol and / or review
- Provide full and formatted search strategy for the appendix as required by publisher or PRISMA guidelines
- Write and deliver manuscript sections related to the search methodology
- Help identifying software for the review team
- Guidance in project and data management for the review
Attribution Requirements
Citation
Our librarians write searches on a variety of topics. If a librarian provides a pre-written or previously built search string to the authors, it is necessary to cite the librarian within the paper. It would be similar to citing a dataset.
Co-Authorship
The Texas A&M University Libraries have adopted the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) definition of authorship. If a librarian helping with a review meets the defined criteria, that person will be listed as an author on articles and other resulting scholarly dissemination.
Open Access (OA) Publishing
Librarians typically do not receive research funding and are not able to pay publication fees should authors decide to pursue open access options. However, this does not preclude librarians from authorship should their intellectual contribution match the ICMJE criteria. Please see our OA page for more information about free and reduced-cost publishing opportunities.
Attribution by Level of Involvement
Attribution will differ according to level of involvement. This is a quick reference guide detailing librarian's involvement paired with level of attribution.
|
Level of Involvement |
Level of Attribution |
|---|---|
|
Writes the search, provides the search strategy for publication, contributes to writing and revising the Methods section, and is accountable for answering questions about the search methods and process |
Co-Authorship |
|
Multiple consultations on the review process |
Acknowledged by name |
|
Provides a pre-existing search string for researchers to adapt |
Acknowledged by name OR In-paper citation |
|
Quick review of search strategy or Methods section |
None |
Contact Us
For questions, please contact our AskUs Desk.
If you are affiliated with these schools and institutions, you can also email mslreview@library.tamu.edu:
- Medicine
- Nursing
- Pharmacy
- Public Health
- TAMU Health - Centers, Institutes and affiliated clinical faculty
- Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
