Thursday, February 19, 2015

Librarian co-authors correlated with higher quality reported search strategies in general internal medicine systematic reviews

The title of this paper, just published online, says it all, really:
Rethlefsen, M., Farrell, A., Osterhaus Trzasko, L. and Brigham, T. (2015) Librarian co-authors correlated with higher quality reported search strategies in general internal medicine systematic reviews. Journal of clinical epidemiology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2014.11.025
The aim of the study was "To determine whether librarian and information specialist authorship was associated with better reported systematic review search quality. .... Systematic reviews from high impact general internal medicine journals were reviewed for search quality characteristics and reporting quality by independent reviewers using three instruments, including a checklist of Institute of Medicine Recommended Standards for the Search Process and a scored modification of the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies instrument. .... Systematic reviews with librarian or information specialist co-authors are correlated with significantly higher quality reported search strategies. To minimize bias in systematic reviews, authors and editors could encourage librarian engagement in systematic reviews including authorship as a potential way to help improve documentation of the search strategy." http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356%2815%2900057-8/abstract

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