Research support for literature reviews

Are you preparing for a systematic literature review or writing a scoping review? Do you need help conducting a structured literature search? Do you want to make sure not to miss out on relevant literature within your field of research? – Librarians working with research support at the Social Sciences Faculty Library can assist you in different ways.

We can help by:

• Guiding you to relevant search terms describing your research question, subject databases and specific search techniques in the chosen databases.
• Conducting a structured search for a systematic literature review, scoping review, research survey or similar tasks.
• Delivering search results and documentation in a systematic and transparent manner, in relevant formats and according to standards (e.g. PRISMA).
• Arranging seminars, workshops or courses where we focus on presenting tools and practice essential principles for conducting a systematic literature review.

For larger assignments (a meta-analysis, systematic literature review), we usually work two librarians together. Please book a meeting with us well in advance to enable us to plan and start structuring the literature search!

Why involve librarians in the (re)search process?

The quality and reliability of the literature search increases. To let a librarian conduct the literature search add special competences, for example:

• knowledge about the content, structure and thesaurus of different databases
• selection of databases, search terms, limitors and facets
• experiences from other search assignments and collegial exchange
• documentation of the search process in a transparent way that is possible to reproduce
• Studies show that review articles, where a librarian or information specialist has conducted the literature search, maintains a significantly higher quality when it comes to search strategies. See link in right column for further reading.

Efficient searches conducted by a librarian/information specialist saves time for the researcher.

Recommendations from leading organizations

For example The Campbell Collaboration, The Cochrane Collaboration, The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence and SBU. The following links below directs you to each organization websites: 

• The Campbell Collaboration
• The Cochrane Collaboration
• The Collaboration for Environmental Evidence
• SBU (PDF, 1,64 MB, new tab)

Fundamental principles and tools for conducting systematic literature reviews

Read more and find references to further reading. The libguides are created with researchers and students within the agricultural, environmental and health sciences in mind, but are to a large extent relevant to other subject areas as well.

SLU hub for Systematic Reviews

Ämnesguide (Subject guide) Evidensbaserad medicin: Vad är EBM? (In Swedish, but many links to further reading in English)