Skip to Main Content

Libraries & Cultural Resources

Research Guides

Psychology

FAQs on UME/PGME/Psychology Librarian Involvement

We are happy to provide collaborative support in your learning and development with the goal to build independent skill capacity. If you know you will be conducting a systematic and scoping review and do not know where to begin, or need help getting sorted out, we will first connect you with self-paced resources for your review before you proceed.

We can teach you how to navigate the library website and use our features and services such as interlibrary loan and productivity tools like Lean Library.

We can chat about your project and what you can expect in the data gathering phase.

After you've found some exemplar papers, are in the protocol drafting stage and have given your search terms and strategy an initial try, the UME/PGME/Psychology librarian is pleased to assist you in refining your search terms and the beginning of a search strategy for you to expand upon, edit and adapt.

There are different staffing and operational models at higher education/health institutions across Canada, where librarians have varying job classes, categories and scope of work. In the spirit of productive and friendly collaboration, please find below select out-of-scope activities/expertise for the current UME/PGME/Psychology librarian(s) at UCalgary:

  • We are unable to provide data-extraction, meta-analysis methodology guidance, or statistics training. Check out HubMeta for options to streamline the process.
  • We are unable to accommodate PRESS requests
  • We do not provide peer review, editing, writing or in-depth citation style consultations; please see the Writing Support Centre for specialized support and recommendations.
  • We are not currently validating or citation checking batches of AI prompt outputs and results.
    • Citations generated by AI can be copied and pasted into Google Scholar or the library search box to confirm their existence and to obtain full text.

 

 

The library does not offer a systematic review or literature review service to run searches for research teams. Please see the section on co-authorship for additional clarity on collaboration.

Our focus as academic staff is to build campus capacity through our offers of teaching, learning and research activities primarily around the data collection/information piece of systematic and scoping reviews. The UME/PGME/Psychology librarian is not a methodologist. For comprehensive training, please consult our library collections for handbooks, and consider enrolling in a free or fee-based course.

We are pleased to provide encouraging consultations and learning resources to students, trainees and RAs! The principal investigator or graduate supervisor maintains the role of project manager/mentor to provide staff and students the necessary structure, training and guidance required for a successful project. If a student or research team requires intensive mentoring or is experiencing confusion around the project direction or expectations of their deliverables, we will refer students back to preceptors/supervisors/PI for that support. 

There are predictable times of the year on campus that are busy periods, or periods with lower staff availability. Providing students and RAs information on this can help them with time management and expectations connecting with cross-campus resources. 

Your student or research team will need to do some pre-reading, pre-work and independent learning due to the complexity and scale of knowledge synthesis projects. 

Students will need to ensure they are completing work according to UCalgary academic integrity and misconduct rules and guidelines.

A note for consideration:

Consider hiring research associates with prior experience with database searching and literature reviews as this is a foundational skill for systematic and scoping reviews. 

Knowledge synthesis projects are intended to be the gold standard of high quality synthesized data and literature. The data in knowledge synthesis projects emerges from carefully crafted literature searches, and is an essential element of all synthesis projects. Good good data in =  good data out.

As scoping reviews and systematic reviews are immensely resource intensive in terms of personnel, time and methodological knowledge, it is essential that students, trainees and researchers fully understand and assess the feasibility of doing an entire project of this magnitude from start to finish. We would like to emphasize that self-directed learning, including database searching training and practice, will be necessary.

Instructors, preceptors and researchers are urged to consider the pros and cons before recommending or assigning a knowledge synthesis project to trainees and students; taking into consideration the resources required for a successful, timely and gratifying outcome.

 

Teams are welcome to extend acknowledgement by name for library staff member participation or help on a protocol or manuscript/presentation. While we do not offer an official systematic review service, the PGME/UME/Psychology librarian does participate on select research collaborations as a co-author. Successful projects have team members with shared goals, understanding of scale and scope, adherence to timelines and deliverables and a strong project organizer. 

Collaboration conversations are engaged once research teams have a working draft of their protocol document and have identified seed papers. Search strategies will be conducted on an agreed upon timeline. For best results, screening should occur shortly (within one month) after the librarian uploads the citations into Covidence.

Requests to change or re-run searches due to project delays, projects put on hiatus or changes in topic/research question may not be accommodated after the agreed upon search timeline. This is due to the time-intensive nature of expert database searching already provided, and to best meet requests from other research teams who may be waiting to collaborate. If delays are anticipated, be sure to include your librarian colleague early in those discussions.

Declining participation is overwhelmingly due to scheduling availability. Thank you for your understanding. 

Approaching your Knowledge Synthesis Project

Before you assign or accept a role on a systematic or scoping review project:

  • Is a systematic review or scoping review the appropriate choice for your research?
  • Consider if you have available and appropriate resources (time, personnel etc)
    • Do you have the time and motivation for self-directed learning and independence for this type of project?
    • Do you have a training plan for skill development? 
    • Notably: this includes independent database searching, data extraction, finding full text etc
    • Most projects take between 6 months to 2 years to complete, and updates to the searches may be necessary

Project Management

  • You need at least two team members who will be actively searching and screening the literature, 3+ is better for building consensus
  • You will need to search at least 2 academic databases
  • Create a project site on Teams etc. for collaboration
  • Set up a Covidence account and invite your team members 
  • Set up an account in OVID 
  • Sign up for Endnote OR Zotero for citing and writing
  • Document search strategies in text (not just screen shots)
  • Save files with dates and initials

Discovery Phase

  • Turn your topic of inquiry into a research question (this ensures when you doing your title/abstract screen you can identify whether your question can be answered (confirmed, refuted or remains inconclusive).
  • Establish some inclusion and exclusion criteria (population, intervention, geographical location etc)
  • Go to Google Scholar to try and find some papers (hint: pay attention to literature saturation...is there too much? Too little? Lots of synthesis projects already published on your topic?)
  • Adjust your question and inclusion/exclusion criteria as necessary and then go back and re-search Google Scholar

Protocol

  • A protocol is your project plan/roadmap
  • Most journals want to see an open and discoverable protocol posted prior to publication of a full review
    • The protocol should be completed before abstract screening begins
  • PROSPERO for systematic reviews only
  • PRISM 
  • Preprint Server 
  • Open Science Framework

Checklists

Database Training

Covidence

Citation Managers

 

Libraries & Cultural Resources