Can I get help with my search strategy?

Advice on a search strategy

You can contact us with questions about:

• Developing a systematic search strategy, for example for PubMed
• Biomedical databases
• Tips for translating a search strategy to other databases
• Updating a search strategy
• Deduplicating results
• Reporting the methodology
• Peer review of search strategies
  

What can you expect from us?

• We help you by giving feedback on your search strategy and answering your questions
• We also provide suggestions for testing and optimising the search strategy
• We don't validate your search strategy, we merely advise you and brainstorm with you.

What do we expect from you?

• We expect you to take responsibility for the search strategy yourself
• Consider attending a workshop first, or request the workshop slides before developing your search strategy. This way, you'll know what to consider when developing a search strategy.
• If you would like to make an appointment, please complete all fields in the online form:
  • the research question (e.g. PICO)
  • PubMed IDs of important articles
  • a (PubMed) search strategy with MeSH and free text

  • indicate what your questions are or what you want to discuss

Collaboration in literature research

Our information specialists have extensive experience with systematic literature research (search). Collaboration with an information specialist can increase the quality of the search method in your review.

We ensure:

• A robust, transparent and reproducible search strategy that match the research question and that has been well tested

• A clearly described method

• That the (PRISMA) guidelines have been followed
  

In addition, we advise on:

• The deduplication method
• If applicable, the screening workflow when using ASReview
  

What can you expect?

• We make an appointment to discuss the project and the possibilities for collaboration
• We discuss the planning and (if we are going to work together) the division of tasks and the next steps
  

What do we expect from you?

We expect you to:

• Contact us at the start of the project and share the (provisional) protocol
• Involve the information specialist in all communication about the project
• Be willing to cooperate. For example, we'll ask you to screen sets of articles when testing the search strategy
• Agree that the UMCG will be listed as the primary affiliation on the article and the information specialist as co-author

Interested? Contact us at: literaturesearch umcg.nl