It Takes a Working Group to Create Strong Reviews: Enhancing Systematic Review Support and Services

Do you want to improve the quality of reviews you work on? Develop best practices for establishing, managing, and evaluating systematic review services? Develop closer relationships with and learn from others in your organization who work on reviews? Read on.

Systematic reviews are dynamic, time and resource-intensive projects. Eileen Wafford, co-author of over 20 reviews and originator/convener of a successful systematic review working group, will show you can form a systematic review working group (SRWG) that will enable you to get the most from the review process–better reviews, greater knowledge of resources, improved policies and practices, and an opportunity to learn from colleagues who also work on reviews.

Your colleagues have a wealth of information, knowledge, and skills related to systematic (and scoping) reviews. This training will teach you how to tap into that knowledge bank to improve personal, departmental, and library-wide systematic reviews practices. You’ll learn how to facilitate group discussions and discover approaches to addressing real situations encountered during the review process.

If you are the only health sciences librarian working on evidence syntheses at your institution, you will have an opportunity to connect with librarians outside of your institution to form a cross-institution SRWG.

Using an example systematic review working group charter, a best practices document, and examples of SRWG meeting agendas, you’ll work through the process of forming a systematic review working group–from developing a charter to identifying meeting ideas, exploring ways to facilitate meetings, and evaluating the effectiveness of the working group and review processes.

By the end of the webinar, you will have skills in implementing best practices for establishing, managing, and evaluating systematic review services that will yield higher quality, more efficient reviews for you and fellow group members.


This course is required for Level II of the Systematic Review Services Specialization.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

  • Form a systematic review working group or committee
  • Develop working group materials
  • Produce working group meeting ideas and discussion topics
  • Evaluate review processes and working group processes

Audience

Health Sciences and medical librarians and other health information professionals who have a basic knowledge of the systematic review process and consult on reviews or provide full support to review teams.

Presenter

Eileen Wafford is a research librarian at Galter Health Science Library and Learning Center at Northwestern University. Eileen has consulted or collaborated on systematic and scoping reviews since 2014. In 2018, she launched a systematic review working group that began with librarians in her department and now includes hospital and non-medical librarians from the main campus. She used the information gathered from the working group, colleagues, and her own experience to lead the publication of two case reports that discuss a toolkit for librarians and issues surrounding communication in the systematic review process.

MLA CE: 1.5

Not Enrolled

Course Includes

  • 4 Lessons
  • Course Certificate