Systematic Reviews: Our Service

The Systematic Review (SR) service is open to current Penn and PennMedicine faculty, staff and students. Due to time considerations and library resources, the SR service is not available to non-Penn researchers. Requests from CHOP will only be considered if there is a Penn faculty member on the review team. 

To prepare for your Systematic Review consultation, we suggest you visit the Systematic Review webpage.

Priority will be given to Systematic Review projects supported by grants or other funds, which contribute to library costs in the budget of the grant proposal, or other time-sensitive projects.  

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The Holman Biotech Commons offers a two-tiered level of service for Systematic Reviews (SR) assistance. Our Education-oriented service provides face-to-face consultations covering the processes and best practices for conducting a systematic review. It is designed to get the researcher started.

In the Advanced service, librarians are considered full team members of the research team and conduct in-depth literature searches, assist with citation management, and write the literature search methodology for the final paper for publication.

For the Education - Oriented Service, we can offer:

• Consultation on SR process and guidelines.
• Assistance on refining research topics and initial search strategies.
• Assistance on inclusion and exclusion criteria.
• Recommendations for databases and other resources to search.
• Advice on identifying controlled vocabulary and keywords.
• Advice on citation management methods and tools. 

For the Advanced Service, we offer to: 

• Gather appropriate controlled vocabulary & keywords in conjunction with team members 
• Conduct literature searches across multiple databases
• Advise on gray literature resources
• Provide assistance with citation management
• Advise on retrieving full-text articles
• Refine and update searches
• Write the methodology section for publication
• Review manuscript
• Maintain communication with other team members

Schedule a meeting with a librarian to discuss your systematic review project and the service you request. 

Systematic Reviews are time intensive requiring a high level of intellectual effort so we recommend involving the librarian early in the SR process. This SR process involves a commitment from both the librarians and other team members. In order to facilitate a successful outcome to the SR process, we require that you provide the following:

• Your research question has been defined (in PICO format if appropriate)
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria have been considered
• A research protocol is in place which includes a timeline as well as desired outcome (published SR, meta-analysis, guideline)
• Your research team has been established and includes experts from various disciplines. The Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine report, "Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Review," could be used as a guide.  

• Availability of the Systematic Review service is contingent upon staffing.
• As team members, librarians will receive co-authorship for advanced Systematic Reviews.