For review teams interested in meeting with a librarian to provide more guidance and education on various aspects of conducting systematic reviews, but do not need the librarian to create and execute the full searches, our consultation service model is appropriate. In the consultation service model, a UAB librarian will meet with an individual researcher or the team to discuss or teach on a variety of topics, sometimes over multiple consultations. For academic projects, the librarian will work with the learner and/or the faculty member to determine what parts of the project must be completed by the student to meet the learning objectives for the academic project, and how to balance librarian expertise and contributions.
 

Individual/Small Group consultation topics may include the following:

• Search development assistance including generating keywords and controlled vocabulary terms, creating the search string for PubMed for the researcher that can be used to translate in other databases, and/or peer-reviewing searches created by the researcher.
• Overview of the systematic review processes and steps
• Advice on reporting of methods in the manuscript
• Referral to relevant systematic review reporting standards
• Advice on formulating the research question using an appropriate framework (PICO, SPIDER, ROSES, PEO, etc.)
• Advice on databases/sources selection for specific topics
• Training in available UAB databases
• Training in the citation manager, EndNote, to manage citations and share results.
• Training in the screening tool Covidence, to manage references for inclusion in the final review.
• How to obtain full-text of published papers (it is the team’s responsibility to obtain full-text of any published papers that will be reviewed.) 
  
  

An acknowledgment should be given to the librarian in the final publication if extensive assistance is provided.

If you'd like to request a consultation, please fill out this form. UAB Librarians will contact you in 1-2 business days to set up an appointment. For more information on the systematic review process, tools, and resources, please see our systematic review research guide, here.