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0:00
Hello, my name is Lindsey Sikora,
and I'm the Health Sciences
Research Liaison Librarian
at the University of Ottawa
in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
My presentation is entitled
Introduction to Systematic
Reviews for Librarians.
And I hope that
this presentation
will help librarians
who are not only new to
doing systematic reviews,
but also provide new tips
and tricks for librarians
who have been doing
systematic reviews for a while.
I should note
that this presentation
for systematic reviews
is not exhaustive
but merely to be used
as a potential guiding tool.
0:30
The purpose of this
presentation is twofold.
Our first objective is to gain
an in-depth understanding
of the systematic review
process from start to finish.
However, that being said,
librarians are not always
involved in all steps
of a systematic review.
This brings us to
our second objective
where we will explore
the key areas
where librarians can
help their researchers
with their systematic
review questions.
0:55
But before we get started,
and for those of you
who may not know exactly
what a systematic review is,
I'd like to outline
what that is.
A systematic review
attempts to gather
all the empirical evidence
that fits pre-specified
eligibility criteria
in order to answer
a specific research question.
This criteria needs
to be very specific
in order to capture
all the relative
primary research studies.
It uses explicit
systematic methods
that are selected with
a view to minimize bias,
thus providing
more reliable findings
from which conclusions
can be drawn
and decisions can be made.
1:33
So what exactly
are the characteristics
of a systematic review?
Well, they include
the following:
A clearly stated
set of objectives
with predefined eligibility
criteria for studies.
It also has an explicit
reproducible methodology.
A systematic search
that attempts to
identify all studies
that would meet
the eligibility criteria.
An assessment of
the validity of the findings
of the included studies,
for example,
through the assessment
of risk of bias.
And lastly, a systematic
presentation and synthesis
of the characteristics
and findings
of those included studies.
