The role of medical librarians in medical education review articles.

Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote, in reference to building on the research of Descartes, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” [1]. Today, this familiar sentence, which appears in such conspicuous places as the Google Scholar search page, has been interpreted to mean that for scholars to further their research, they should seize the opportunity to build on the work of their predecessors. In the last decade, medical education has been recognized as a discipline of scientific inquiry [2]. With this recognition has come the call for increased publication of scientifically rigorous research in medical education because the results of research in medical education will ultimately impact patient care [3, 4]. Additional research, especially additional systematic reviews, should provide an opportunity for medical educators to “hoist themselves upon the shoulders of their colleagues” so that they too may be able to see just a bit farther [5]. However, a recent examination of medical education review articles concluded there was variability in the quality and reporting of search strategies, resulting in an inability to reproduce results [6]. That study made recommendations for conducting and reporting literature searches, including adding a librarian to research teams to design and run the search and to assist with retrieving literature and writing the manuscript. The role of the librarian as an expert in literature search and retrieval has been described in published articles for a number of years [7–10]. Sampson and McGowan reviewed the search strategies of sixty-five systematic reviews and found that most contained at least one error and the majority of these errors could affect recall, which might also affect the results of the reviews [11]. That study suggested the need to use an expert when developing a search strategy. Furthermore, the Institute of Medicine and the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality have both recently published reports recommending that librarians be included as members of research teams [12] and that their expertise in literature searching be integrated into the research process [13]. Librarian contributions not only add to the quality of the literature search, but the resulting research as well. As a follow up to the study of search quality and reporting in medical education review articles noted above [6], the current study examined the role (if any) that was played by a librarian in medical education reviews.