Literature Search Service

Service Overview

Literature reviews of a systematic nature are a value-added service available for current members of the Stanford Medicine community. The project lead and point-of-contact to Lane Library must be a Stanford affiliate.

Our librarians can help you with your search strategy creation for any type of review or project, including but not limited to:

Systematic Review
Literature Review for Grant Application
Thesis or Dissertation
Course Assignment
Scoping Review
Book Chapter
Thesis Report

Due to the in-depth and time-intensive nature of this work, each librarian can work on a limited number of reviews at a time so the service may not be immediately available if we have already reached our maximum capacity. In such cases, your request will be queued and we will communicate with you about estimated start date.

If you are interested in collaborating with a Lane Library on a Systematic Review, please visit our Systematic Review Guide for specific information about the process including definitions and guidelines as well as tools for assessment of articles and more.

Systematic Review Guide

Service Tiers

In an effort to provide the highest levels of service and quality to the entire community, we offer three service tiers based on librarian authorship.

SERVICE LEVEL	LIBRARIAN AUTHORSHIP	DELIVERABLES	WORK (average)
Tier One	Acknowledgement	Initial meeting Review intake form determining if the project is systematic review vs. other type of review (e.g., protocol review, narrative review, literature review for grant application, etc.) Develop a PubMed search strategy Identification and suggestion of other databases to user for extending search Advise on citation management and article appraisal tools	3 hours
Tier Two	Co-authorship	Tier One plus: Identification of other appropriate databases for extending search Translations of searches into other databases Setting up automated database search alerts Provide guidance on searching the grey literature and/or hand searching Development of PRISMA flowchart (upon request) Writing of the methods section + search strategy	3-10 hours
Tier Three	Co-authorship	Tier One & Two plus one or more of: Collaboration at a national/international level conference or on a national-level guideline More in-depth collaboration on additional parts of the project (e.g., writing other parts of the manuscript, providing additional input/support with the systematic review process, etc.) Recommend tools for journal submission selection Advise on compliance with NIH Public Access Policy	10 hours+

Due to the nuanced nature of the work, as projects evolve individual librarians retain the right to change tiers to accurately reflect the nature of the work being conducted, as well as refuse co-authorship. On publication of the article, please provide the acknowledged or co-author librarian a copy of the published manuscript for their portfolio.

Tools & Resources

Lane Library provides training and guidance on tools to improve your literature review process:

Literature Searching Guide: This guide takes you through the process of developing an advanced, robust literature search in PubMed.
Reference Management Software: Collect, manage, cite, and share bibliographic references with Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley, or RefWorks.
Covidence: Improve the efficiency of your systematic reviews with this online tool to streamline the evidence synthesis process. Register with a stanford.edu, stanfordhealthcare.org or stanfordchildrens.org email account.