The effect of librarian involvement on the quality of systematic reviews in dental medicine

Ref ID 798
First Author J. Schellinger
Journal PLOS ONE [ELECTRONIC RESOURCE]
Year Of Publishing 2021
URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256833
Keywords • Searching
• Team
• Dentistry
• Author
• Reproducibility
Problem(s) • Literature searches not validated by information specialist
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United States
Aim To assess whether librarian or information specialist authorship is associated with reproducibility of the search, at least three databases searched, and better reporting quality in dental systematic reviews from highly cited dental medicine journals indexed in PubMed on June 18, 2018.
Level of Investigation Analytical
Summary of Findings From 913 included dental systematic reviews from highly cited dental medicine journals indexed in PubMed on June 18, 2018. Librarians were co-authors in only 2.5% of the 913 included systematic reviews and librarians were mentioned or acknowledged in only 9% of included systematic reviews. Librarian co-authors were associated with more reproducible searches, higher search quality, and at least three databases searched. Although the results indicate librarians are associated with improved systematic review quality, due to the small number of systematic reviews that included a librarian, results were not statistically significant.
Number of systematic reviews included 913
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1343
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted No
Interpretation impacted description