Thank you for your interest in the Harrell Health Sciences systematic review service. This is a high-demand service, often with wait times of several months.
The Harrell Health Sciences Library: Research & Learning Commons offers a fee-based systematic review service (a model for cost recovery) to Faculty, Residents, Fellows and Staff at the Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Our process follows the Institute of Medicine's recommended standards for performing systematic reviews and the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Statistical resources to analyze and pool data must be available.
Students may conduct a meta-analysis as their Medical Student Research (MSR) project. A meta-analysis is an advanced form of a systematic review that generates unique statistical data, an MSR requirement. Student should work closely with their faculty advisor, and in consultation with a librarian and a statistician. Students without advanced statistical skills are advised to also request a Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design Consultation through the Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). Standard systematic reviews, scoping reviews, bibliometric analyses, narrative reviews, and other forms of evidence synthesis do not meet MSR requirements because they do not generate original statistical data. However, students may pursue these types of reviews as ancillary research projects. Systematic review consultations are available for such ancillary research.
Librarians can provide departmental talks, customized instruction and classes on systematic reviews.
Free consultation includes:
- Overview of the process
- Advice on search questions formulation
- Guidance with systematic review steps
- Advise on databases/sources selection for specific topics
- Instruction in database platforms available
- Training in use of bibliographic citation software (e.g. EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks, Zotero, etc.), to manage citations and share results
- How to obtain full-text of published papers (It is the team’s responsibility to obtain full-text of any published papers that will be reviewed.)
*A consultation does not guarantee immediate service assistance.