Collaboration for Knowledge Synthesis Services

The Library offers knowledge synthesis support to members of the University of Ottawa community in the health sciences and medicine, including students, faculty members, researchers, and staff. In response to a significant increase in requests for librarian involvement in knowledge synthesis projects over the past several years, guidelines have been implemented to clarify the scope of support and ensure that expectations are aligned for both researcher(s) and librarian(s). There is no cost for this collaboration.

Knowledge synthesis support differs by user group:

For students, support is instructional and focused on developing research skills.
For faculty members, researchers, and staff, support may be consultative (e.g. acknowledgement) or collaborative (e.g. co-authorship) in nature, depending on project needs, scope, and librarian availability.

Further details outlining the specific types and levels of support are provided below.

The Library is committed to supporting University of Ottawa students in developing the research skills needed to become independent researchers. Individual consultations for knowledge synthesis projects (e.g., systematic reviews, scoping reviews, or other review types) are available for students.

Consultations are provided by the Research Librarian for your discipline and are designed to support skill development throughout the knowledge synthesis process. Depending on the stage of the project, consultations may include:

Developing and refining a research question and selecting an appropriate review type
Developing, translating, and documenting comprehensive search strategies
Identifying relevant databases and grey literature sources
Guidance on search documentation and reproducibility
Support with citation management tools and exporting search results

Please note that librarians will help you develop skills to complete your class assignments, resident projects, dissertations or thesis-based, but these projects are not eligible for co-authorship with a Research Librarian. Please contact your Research Librarian or [email protected] for further library support.

Eligibility

You must be a University of Ottawa student (undergraduate or graduate) or resident; AND
Your knowledge synthesis project must be under the supervision of University of Ottawa affiliated principal investigator.

Consultations are instructional in nature and focus on teaching research skills. Research Librarians do not co-author student work but provide guidance and support throughout the research process. If acknowledgement is appropriate, students should first discuss this with the Research Librarian before including an acknowledgement.

Before booking a consultation

When booking a consultation, student(s) should include any relevant project documentation they may have available prior to meeting with their Research Librarian (e.g., research questions, draft protocols, eligibility criteria, or existing search strategies).

To make the most of your consultation, students are strongly encouraged to complete the following training modules in advance:

Research Writing Modules (University of Alberta) Modules 0-5.1

OR

Knowledge Synthesis Training Modules (Queen’s University) Modules 1-3

Students are also encouraged to review the Library’s Comprehensive Literature Searching guide for the Health Sciences

The Library is pleased to work collaboratively with faculty members and researchers on all types of knowledge synthesis reviews, and can contribute expertise as follows:

Consultation and guidance for developing search strategies
Creation, development, and execution of search strategies
Consultation and support with citation managers and library-supported systematic review software, including importing and exporting from databases, and removing duplicates
Consultation and support for searching the grey literature

Eligibility

Before requesting a collaboration with a Research Librarian, the following criteria must be met:

The Principal Investigator of the project must be University of Ottawa affiliated
The team must have a protocol and 3-5 target articles (articles that would meet inclusion) pre-identified
The team must have already conducted a scan of the published literature to ensure no overlapping works already exist
The review cannot be for academic credit (see Services for Students)

It is understood that Research Librarians designing and running search strategies as part of review teams are significantly contributing to the acquisition of the data for the work, and will be extended authorship rights in in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defined roles and responsibilities of authors and contributors. This includes contributing to the manuscript, review of drafts and approval of the final version to be published.

Teams seeking advice only are also welcome to contact the Library. These consultations would not constitute authorship, however depending on the level of support provided, teams should discuss acknowledgement with the Research Librarian in question.

Booking a meeting with a Research Librarian

Principal Investigators requesting the collaboration of a librarian will:

Fill out the knowledge synthesis intake form, which includes providing a draft of their protocol and key citations prior to meeting with the librarian.
Extend authorship rights to the librarian, in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) for defining the roles and responsibilities of authors and contributors.

Policy on updating knowledge synthesis

This policy applies to all knowledge synthesis projects conducted by Research Librarians. Due to the structured nature of the advanced searching requirements for reviews, each review is limited to a maximum of three (3) updates by the Research Librarian, except in exceptional circumstances. This will include updating a full systematic review with the original databases searched, deduplicating results, and saving them in bibliographic software or other project management tools.

Tiered Service Model (Faculty members only)

Acknowledgement (Tier 1)

Co-authorship (Tier 2)

Initial meeting conducted
Review the consultation form, determining the scope of the project (e.g., systematic review, scoping review, etc.)
Identification and suggestion of other databases to researchers for translating search
Advise on citation management tools

Initial meeting conducted
Review the consultation form, determining the scope of the project (e.g., systematic review, scoping review, etc.)
Develop a draft search strategy in a single database
Identification and suggestion of other databases to user for translating search
Advise on citation management tools
Translation and execution of searches into other databases
Removal of duplicates
Provide guidance on searching the grey literature and/or hand searching
Writing of the methods section and search strategies

Due to capacity constraints, Research Librarians are only able to provide guidance to the following:

Full text article retrieval
Data entry, clean up, extraction, verification or analysis
Screening for title/abstract or full-text articles
Grey literature searches
Incorporation of AI tools

Disclaimers

Requests for Research Librarians are treated on a first come, first served basis, and are subject to librarian availability. Due to the in-depth and time-intensive nature of this work, requests may be put on a waitlist. The Research Librarian will discuss timelines and delivery dates before any work commences.

As projects evolve, the Research Librarian retains the right to change authorship status to accurately reflect the nature of the work being conducted, and to refuse co-authorship.

Collaboration for Knowledge Synthesis Services (Health Sciences and Medicine)

Services for students (undergraduate students, graduate students, and residents) arrow_drop_down

Services for faculty members and researchers affiliated with the University of Ottawa arrow_drop_down

Tiered Service Model (Faculty members only)

Disclaimers