Gerstein Science Information Centre Collaboration

We are currently collaborating with Health Sciences Librarians at the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto. The aim of our project is to implement a library-initiated system requiring protocol development and the use of reporting guidelines by all researchers who request systematic review help from a librarian. As part of our collaboration we are working together to develop tools to support the use of reporting guidelines. We intend to assess the effectiveness of the new system on the willingness of researchers to adopt or adhere to this new practice and on the improved completeness and transparency of the systematic review-related research output of University. We will explore relevant methods to assess such outcomes.

In May 2016 we gave a lightening talk presentation about our project at the Medical Library Association conference in Tornoto and we hope to present the results of the project at a future conference.

A systematic review focused seminar on ‘Impactful biomedical research: achieving quality and transparency’ was also organised in May 2016 by the Librarians at Gerstein for all those involved in scoping or systematic reviews to raise awareness of the latest protocol and reporting guidelines, and to discuss research transparency, reproducibility and data management issues for research studies.

Collaboration participants
Patricia Ayala, Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto
Shona Kirtley, EQUATOR Network, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford